The effect of positive arousal on memory retrieval of advertisements : A neuromarketing approach

Sammanfattning: The objective of this neuromarketing study is to investigate the effect of positive emotional contexts in the recall of neutral stimuli. In the present fMRI experiment, 26 Russian participants of whom, 13 were women, and 13 were men, with an average age of 23.4 years and within a range of age between 18 and 35 years, were scanned while performing a recognition memory test composed of two phases: encoding phase and retrieval phase. In the encoding phase, different snacks products were shown on the monitor accompanied by emotional scenes (high arousal and low arousal scenes) and neutral scenes. Later, at the retrieval phase, the participants were shown the same products plus the same number of unseen products again. The participants had to answer if they remember the product or not. The results obtained showed that the two areas closely related to memory, such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, did not show greater activation when the subjects successfully recalled the neutral stimuli that had been exposed in emotional contexts. On the other hand, other areas related to episodic emotional memory, such as the temporal cortex, the insula or the cingulate cortex, did show greater activation. On the behavioural level, I did not find an improvement of the memory performance on the emotional condition compared to the neutral condition. This study shows a large number of brain areas involved in the retrieval process and the limitations that emotional scenarios have when it comes to improving memory performance.