Layla Akacem
Postgraduate research project
Title: Emotion and Unintentional Memory Retrieval
Area: Cognitive neuroscience
Methods: Behavioural measures and ERP (EEG)
We rely on our memories in many ways. One of these ways is via our ability to intentionally recover stored information, which might be facts and figures or all or part of specific events. This is the kind of memory to which most attention has been paid in laboratory studies. Another way in which we rely on our memories, however, is via information that comes to mind unprompted or (apparently) spontaneously. This kind of memory is a little harder to bring under experimental control, but is none the less an important area of study. I am interested in how emotional states and emotional memory contents influence involuntary memories. I plan to investigate this using a combination of questionnaires and behavioural as well as electrophysiological measures of cognitive and brain processes.