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Science 13 July 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5835, pp. 215 - 219
DOI: 10.1126/science.1139560
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Research Articles

Prefrontal Regions Orchestrate Suppression of Emotional Memories via a Two-Phase Process

Brendan E. Depue,1,2* Tim Curran,1,2,3 Marie T. Banich1,2,3,4

Whether memories can be suppressed has been a controversial issue in psychology and cognitive neuroscience for decades. We found evidence that emotional memories are suppressed via two time-differentiated neural mechanisms: (i) an initial suppression by the right inferior frontal gyrus over regions supporting sensory components of the memory representation (visual cortex, thalamus), followed by (ii) right medial frontal gyrus control over regions supporting multimodal and emotional components of the memory representation (hippocampus, amygdala), both of which are influenced by fronto-polar regions. These results indicate that memory suppression does occur and, at least in nonpsychiatric populations, is under the control of prefrontal regions.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
2 Center for Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
3 Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
4 Department of Psychiatry, University of Denver Health Sciences, Denver, CO 80208, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: depue{at}colorado.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)