Human brain imaging studies have shown that greater amygdala activation to emotional relative to neutral events leads to enhanced episodic memory. Other studies have shown that fearful faces also elicit greater amygdala activation relative to neutral faces. To the extent that amygdala recruitment is sufficient to enhance recollection, these separate lines of evidence predict that recognition memory should be greater for fearful relative to neutral faces. Experiment 1 demonstrated enhanced memory for emotionally negative relative to neutral scenes; however, fearful faces were not subject to enhanced recognition across a variety of delays (15 min to 2 wk). Experiment 2 demonstrated that enhanced delayed recognition for emotional scenes was associated with increased sympathetic autonomic arousal, indexed by the galvanic skin response, relative to fearful faces. These results suggest that while amygdala activation may be necessary, it alone is insufficient to enhance episodic memory formation. It is proposed that a sufficient level of systemic arousal is required to alter memory consolidation resulting in enhanced recollection of emotional events.We tend to remember poignant, emotional events far better than mundane, trivial ones. From births and deaths of loved ones, to weddings and graduations, those events with increased emotional significance achieve prominence in our memory (Christianson 1992;Berntsen and Rubin 2004). Numerous studies have revealed a critical role for the human amygdala in the enhanced episodic memory accompanying emotional events (Cahill et al.

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