Knowing by heart: Visceral feedback shapes recognition memory judgments.

Abstract

Although theories of emotion have long noted the importance of afferent feedback from the autonomic nervous system in generating feelings, there is a growing appreciation that this feedback may also play a role in shaping cognitive experiences. At present, little is known about its functional role in memory judgments. In the current study, we examined whether afferent cardiovascular feedback shapes recognition-memory decisions and experiences when previously encountered faces are being discriminated from novel ones. To investigate this possibility, we capitalized on the natural variation in baroreceptor mediated cardiovascular feedback that is associated with the cardiac cycle, synchronizing the brief presentation of memory probes during retrieval with individual heartbeats. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that faces presented during cardiac systole (i.e., when visceral feedback is maximal) were more likely endorsed as "old" than those presented during cardiac diastole (i.e., when afferent feedback is minimal). This pattern was present for targets and lures, and held for faces with fearful or neutral expressions. Combining this manipulation with a remember/know procedure, Experiment 3 showed that the influence of afferent cardiovascular feedback is specific to trials on which participants report a feeling of familiarity without successful recollection of pertinent contextual detail. By revealing an influence of baroreceptor mediated cardiovascular feedback on familiarity, the current findings identify the functional role of a specific autonomic channel, previously implicated in emotion, in feeling states that pertain to memory experience.

Active information sampling varies across the cardiac cycle

“…Although in our study stimulus content was largely matched along several dimensions (physical image statistics and more high-level features), differences in stimulus features may still account for variation in memory effects associated with the cardiac cycle. For example, differences have been reported for different stimulus categories like words (Garfinkel et al, 2013), faces (Fiacconi et al, 2016), and complex scenes (present study), but also for low-level stimulus properties such as spatial frequency (Azevedo et al, 2018). However, accounting for picture as random effect in our GLMM analyses did not explain additional variance in memory performance across the cardiac cycle.…”

“…Particularly the heart, as a fundamental internal oscillator, has been the target of a growing body of research that investigates how cardiac fluctuations are integrated with the processing of external stimuli (Critchley & Garfinkel, 2018). same time, phasic cardiac modulation of stimulus processing has been associated with altered memory formation and retrieval (Fiacconi, Peter, Owais, & Köhler, 2016;Garfinkel et al, 2013)-also in the context of respiratory oscillations (Zelano et al, 2016). Taken together, sensory processing is differentially modulated during early cardiac phases, indicating a selective processing benefit for relevant (e.g., emotionally arousing) stimuli, while other perceptual processes are attenuated (Garfinkel & Critchley, 2016).…”

Feedback from the heart: Emotional learning and memory is controlled by cardiac cycle, interoceptive accuracy and personality

“…In contrast to these inhibitory effects, cardiac systole can enhance the detection of rapidly presented visual stimuli (Garfinkel et al, 2013;Park, Correia, Ducorps, & Tallon-Baudry, 2014;Pramme, Larra, Schächinger, & Frings, 2016) and increase the perceived intensity of facial expressions of fear (Garfinkel, Minati, et al, 2014) and disgust (Gray et al, 2012). In studies of memory for faces, a shift in response bias is observed during face recognition, wherein cardiac systole evokes increased false feelings of familiarity for novel faces (Fiacconi, Peter, Owais, & Köhler, 2016). During memory for words, systole enhances confidence at encoding to predict better memory at retrieval (Garfinkel et al, 2013).…”

Noncontact measurement of emotional and physiological changes in heart rate from a webcam

“…The work here was intended to serve as a proof of principle that measurement of HR via webcam is sensitive enough for psychological studies. HR decelerations have been shown to index subsequent memory (Abercrombie et al, ; Buchanan et al, ; Cunningham et al, ; Fiacconi, Peter, Owais, & Köhler, ; Garfinkel et al, ; Jennings & Hall, ), task difficulty (Kahneman et al, ), interoceptive awareness (Garfinkel et al, ), and state anxiety (Garfinkel et al, ; Schachter & Singer, ). Heart rate is also known to be coupled to other physiological measures such as pupil dilation, skin conductance, and microsaccades (Bradley et al, ; Kahneman et al, ; Ohl, Wohitat, Kliegl, Pollatos, & Engbert, ).…”