TY - JOUR
T1 - Blood glucose changes and memory: effects of manipulating emotionality and mental effort
AU - Kennedy, David
AU - Laing, Sarah
AU - Scholey, Andrew
PY - 2006/1
Y1 - 2006/1
N2 - Increasing the emotionality of target material often facilitates memory performance which may be linked to the liberation of glucose. Conversely, increasing mental effort leads to reduced performance and measurable falls in blood glucose. A 2 × 2, parallel groups experiment examined these two phenomena directly by assessing blood glucose levels and memory for neutral and emotional word lists, both with and without a secondary task. Co-performing the secondary task significantly reduced blood glucose in the neutral word condition only and resulted in a global reduction of memory performance in both neutral and emotional word conditions. Processing emotional material resulted in significantly raised blood glucose levels, however, there was no advantage for memory of emotional words. A follow-up study confirmed that the emotionality manipulation was effective. We conclude that there exists a clear relationship between reduced blood glucose and impaired memory performance during periods of mental effort. However, the relationship between physiological and cognitive processes associated with processing emotional material are more complex.
AB - Increasing the emotionality of target material often facilitates memory performance which may be linked to the liberation of glucose. Conversely, increasing mental effort leads to reduced performance and measurable falls in blood glucose. A 2 × 2, parallel groups experiment examined these two phenomena directly by assessing blood glucose levels and memory for neutral and emotional word lists, both with and without a secondary task. Co-performing the secondary task significantly reduced blood glucose in the neutral word condition only and resulted in a global reduction of memory performance in both neutral and emotional word conditions. Processing emotional material resulted in significantly raised blood glucose levels, however, there was no advantage for memory of emotional words. A follow-up study confirmed that the emotionality manipulation was effective. We conclude that there exists a clear relationship between reduced blood glucose and impaired memory performance during periods of mental effort. However, the relationship between physiological and cognitive processes associated with processing emotional material are more complex.
U2 - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2005.02.003
DO - 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2005.02.003
M3 - Article
SN - 0301-0511
SN - 1873-6246
VL - 71
SP - 12
EP - 19
JO - Biological Psychology
JF - Biological Psychology
IS - 1
ER -