β-Adrenergic blockade during reactivation reduces the subjective feeling of remembering associated with emotional episodic memories

In contrast to neutral events, emotionally arousing events often are remembered vividly and with great detail. Although generally adaptive to survival, this emotional memory enhancement may contribute to psychopathology. Blocking the arousal-related noradrenergic activity with a beta blocker shortly after learning prevents the emotional enhancement of memory. In the present experiment, we tested in 48 healthy subjects whether the administration of the beta blocker propranolol before the reactivation of already consolidated emotional episodic memories may interfere with their reconsolidation and, thus, reduce the subsequent feeling of remembering associated with these memories. Our results show that propranolol before reactivation abolished the superior memory for emotional relative to neutral stimuli and decreased 'remember' judgments for emotional items, suggesting that beta-adrenergic blockade during reactivation made emotional memories comparable to neutral memories. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.