Awake ripples enhance emotional memory encoding in the human brain

Abstract Intracranial recordings from the human amygdala and the hippocampus during an emotional memory encoding and discrimination task reveal increased awake sharp-wave/ripples (aSWR) after encoding of emotional compared to neutral stimuli. Further, post-encoding aSWR-locked memory reinstatement in the amygdala and the hippocampus was predictive of later memory discrimination. These findings provide electrophysiological evidence that post-encoding aSWRs enhance memory for emotional events.