Elizabeth A. Phelps

Psychology

Human Learning and Memory

Go to my homepage in Psychology.

The research in my lab examines the Cognitive Neuroscience of human learning and memory, particularly as it is changed by emotion. We approach this topic from two perspectives. The first is a neural approach in which we try to determine if what we know about the neural systems of emotional learning and memory from animal models can be applied and extended to human learning and memory. For example, it is well known from studies with non-human animals that the amygdala is a critical structure in the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear. Once we confirmed these basic animal findings in humans, we asked how does this neural system for fear acquisition and expression extend to situations that are more typical of human experience? For instance, you may learn to fear something because it occurred with aversive consequences, an example of fear conditioning. Or, you may learn to fear something because you were told that it could be paired with negative consequences. This fear learning by instruction is unique to humans. The question we asked is; does the same neural system that supports fear conditioning across species also support instructed fear in humans? The answer appears to be yes, with some modification. Through studies with patients with amygdala lesions and fMRI in normal subjects, we found that the left amygdala is important for the expression of the fear response with instructed fear. This is just one example of our work using this neural approach in which we take cues from animal models to help us understand the neural basis of human experience.

The second perspective guiding our research is motivated by psychological studies. Both previous behavioral studies and our introspection lead us to ask questions about the complex ways emotion influences learning and memory in everyday life. For instance, although we know that there are several different types of memory in humans, the predominant one is the ability to recollect information at will. These memories for emotional events seem to have a persistence and vividness that other memories lack. There are several possible ways emotion may alter this explicit, hippocampal-dependent form of memory. Emotion may alter the rate of forgetting for emotional stimuli, provide an organizing theme to aid in later recall, influence attention or perceptual encoding, or add a component of distinctiveness. All these variables may act independently to influence our ability to recollect emotional information. We are investigating the independent effects these factors have on memory or perceptual encoding of emotional stimuli and the neural basis for these effects. This behavior-motivated approach to asking questions about the neural basis of emotional learning has led us to investigate several other issues as well.

By combining traditional cognitive techniques, psychophysiology and brain studies, we hope to achieve a more complete understanding of emotion's influence on human learning and memory from the behavioral and neuroanatomical perspectives.

E-mail: liz.phelps@nyu.edu

Selected Publications

• LaBar, K.S., Gatenby, C., Gore, J.C., LeDoux, J.E., and Phelps, E.A. (1998) Human amygdala activation during conditioned fear acquisition and extinction: A mixed trial fMRI study. Neuron 20: 937-945
• Chun, M.M., and Phelps, E.A. (1999) Memory deficits for implicit contextual information in amnesic subjects with hippocampal damage. Nature Neuroscience 2: 844-847
• Phelps, E.A., O'Connor, K.J., Cunningham, W.A., Funayma, E.S., Gatenby, J.C., Gore, J.C., and Banaji, M.R. (2000) Performance on indirect measures of race evaluation predicts amygdala activity. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12: 729-738
• Funayama, E.S., Grillon, C.G., Davis, M., and Phelps, E.A. (2001) A double dissociation in the affective modulation of startle in humans: Effects of unilateral temporal lobectomy. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 13: 721-729
• Phelps E.A., O'Connor, K.J., Gatenby, J.C., Grillon, C., Gore, J.C., and Davis, M. (2001) Activation of the left amygdala to a cognitive representation of fear. Nature Neuroscience 4: 437-441
• Anderson, A.K., and Phelps, E.A. (2001) Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events. Nature 411: 305-309
• Phelps, E.A. (2002) The cognitive neuroscience of emotion. In Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of Mind 2nd, eds. M.S. Gazzaniga, R.B. Ivry and G.R. Mangun, New York, New York: Norton