Title: The role of emotion in memory | About memory
Headings: The role of emotion in memory
The role of emotion in memory
The effect of emotional content
The effect of mood
Brain regions involved in the emotion-memory interaction
The relationship between emotion and attention
How do emotions affect memory?
Age and gender differences
References:

Content: which refers to the fact that remembering is easier when your mood at retrieval matches your mood at encoding (thus, your chances of remembering an event or fact are greater if you evoke the emotional state you were in at the time of experiencing the event or learning the fact). An interesting issue in the study of emotion is the degree to which what we feel is influenced by our expression of it. In other words, does a person who conceals what they are feeling feel as deeply as a person who openly displays their emotion? Does the expression of emotion, in itself, affect what we feel? I remember reading Paul Ekman (the guru of interpreting facial expressions, and author of several books on the subject) say that, when practicing the expressions, he found himself experiencing the emotions they expressed. However, accurate expression of emotion does seem to require considerable expertise (if the emotion is not, in fact, being felt) - people are very good at distinguishing false expressions of emotion. The way people go about controlling their reactions to emotional events does seem to affect their memory of the event. People shown a video of an emotional event and instructed not to let their emotions show were found to have a poorer memory for what was said and done than did those who were given no such instructions. However, as with emotional content, we cannot simply say that emotional state affects memory. The nature of the emotion being felt is also important.