Sex- and hemisphere-related influences on the neurobiology of emotionally influenced memory

Abstract

Recent findings are beginning to reveal apparently pronounced influences of both sex and cerebral hemisphere on the neurobiology of emotionally influenced memory. In this article, I first provide a brief, general overview of sex-related influences on brain and cognition. I next describe recent findings from my laboratory and others demonstrating sex-related influences on neural mechanisms underlying emotionally influenced explicit recall of emotionally arousing events. Both the hemispheric involvement of the human amygdala in memory for emotionally arousing events and the impairing effect of beta-adrenergic blockade on memory for emotional events, exhibit sex-related differences. I hypothesize that both of these effects relate to a modulatory influence of each amygdala on ipsilateral hemispheric function. Specifically, I hypothesize that the right hemisphere amygdala modulates right hemispheric processing of global/central aspects of a situation (an effect more pronounced in males), while the left hemisphere amygdala modulates left hemispheric processing of more local/fine detail aspects of a situation (an effect more pronounced in females). More generally, these findings presented here suggest that the interacting influences of sex and cerebral hemisphere on emotionally influenced memory are more pronounced than has been widely appreciated to date.