Memory for aversive events is central to survival, but can also become maladaptive in psychiatric disorders. Emotional memory relies on the amygdala and hippocampus, but the neural dynamics of their communication during emotional memory encoding remain unknown. Using simultaneous intracranial recordings from both structures in human patients, we show that in response to emotionally aversive, but not neutral, visual stimuli, the amygdala transmits unidirectional influence on the hippocampus through theta oscillations. Critically, successful emotional memory encoding depends on the precise amygdala theta phase to which hippocampal gamma activity and neuronal firing couple. The phase difference between subsequently remembered vs. not-remembered emotional stimuli translates to ∼25-45 milliseconds, a time period that enables lagged coherence between amygdala and downstream hippocampal gamma activity. These results reveal a mechanism whereby amygdala theta phase coordinates transient coherence between amygdala and hippocampal gamma activity to facilitate the encoding of aversive memories in humans.

中文翻译：

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人类的厌恶记忆形成由杏仁核 - 海马相位代码决定

对厌恶事件的记忆是生存的核心，但也可能在精神疾病中变得适应不良。情绪记忆依赖于杏仁核和海马体，但它们在情绪记忆编码期间交流的神经动力学仍然未知。使用来自人类患者的两种结构的同时颅内记录，我们表明，为了响应情绪厌恶但不是中性的视觉刺激，杏仁核通过 theta 振荡对海马体产生单向影响。至关重要的是，成功的情绪记忆编码取决于海马伽马活动和神经元放电耦合的精确杏仁核 theta 阶段。随后记住的与. 不记得的情绪刺激转化为 ~25-45 毫秒，这个时间段使杏仁核和下游海马伽马活动之间的滞后连贯性成为可能。这些结果揭示了一种机制，即杏仁核 theta 相位协调杏仁核和海马伽马活动之间的瞬态相干性，以促进人类厌恶记忆的编码。