The impact of different emotional states on the memory for what, where and when features of specific events

- We investigated the impact of emotional states on what, where and when memory.
- An anxious emotional state impaired the memory for the location of events in virtual reality.
- High levels of negative arousal were associated with poor memory for the temporal and spatial context of events.
- High levels of happiness were associated with better memory for the spatial context of events.

Emotions can modulate the encoding and recollection of personal events. In the present study, we investigated the effects of different emotional states (pleasant, neutral or anxious) on episodic memory formation in a virtual reality (VR) setting. Emotional states were induced by pleasant, neutral or anxiety-inducing movie clips prior to the presentation of specific events in a VR scenario. Episodic memory performance of healthy participants in whom an anxious emotional state had been induced was inferior to those of the neutral and pleasant conditions. In the anxious condition, participants were particularly impaired regarding their memory for the location of events. A correlational analysis indicated that high levels of negative arousal were associated with poor memory for the temporal and spatial context of events. In contrast, high levels of happiness were associated with better memory for the spatial context of events. Our data provide evidence that emotional arousal can modulate memory for what happened, where and when.