Sex-Related Memory Recall for Emotional  Stimuli:

an Event Related Potential  Study

Benedetto Arnone1, Assunta Pompili1, Maria Clotilde Tavares2, Antonella Gasbarri1

ABSTRACT

Recent  studies  have   evidenced   an   increasing  interest  in  sex-related   brain   mechanisms   and   cerebral lateralization subserving emotional  memory. We used event related  potentials (ERP) to examine the influence of sex and  hemisphere  on brain responses  to emotional stimuli. Given that the P300  component  of ERP is considered a cognitive neuroelectric phenomenon, we compared  left and right hemisphere P300 responses to emotional stimuli in men and women. As indexed by both amplitude and latency measures,  emotional stimuli elicited more  robust  P300  effects in the  left hemisphere  in women  than  in men,  while a  stronger  P300 component  was elicited in the right hemisphere  in men  compared  to women.  Our  findings show that  the variables of sex and hemisphere interacted significantly to influence the strength of the P300 component  to the emotional stimuli. Emotional stimuli were also best recalled when given a long-term, incidental memory test, a fact potentially related  to the  differential P300  waves at  encoding.  In the  present  study we evaluated  the differences between the two genders in the recollection of emotional stimuli.

Keywords: Event-related-potential (ERP); P300; Gender;  Emotional Stimuli; Memory;