EEG ERP Memory, Emotion, and Narrative Formation - FALAN Lat Brain Bee SfN 2025

Consciousness in First Person

I am Consciousness that remembers and tells. My memories are not just stored files: they are emotions that became feelings, feelings that organized into narratives. Each time I recall, I don’t simply relive the past — I reconstruct, reinterpret, and rewrite it. I am living history, an electrical field sustained by chemistry and belonging.

1. How emotions become memories

• Rapid emotions (50–900 ms), captured in ERPs, activate the limbic system, especially the amygdala.
  
  

• When coupled with attention and relevance, these emotions are consolidated in the hippocampus as episodic memories.
  
  

• Strong emotions act as “anchors” for recall, increasing the likelihood of durable memories.
  
  

2. From feeling to narrative

• In extra-long states (>900 ms, EEG-DC), feelings extend in time and connect with previous memories.
  
  

• Repetition of this process constructs personal narratives, which organize identity and belonging.
  
  

• Practical example: an adolescent may transform the quick emotion of a gaming victory into a narrative of identity — “I am a gamer, I am competitive.”
  
  

3. The role of neurochemistry in consolidation

• Dopamine: signals surprise and reward → increases likelihood of memory consolidation.
  
  

• Cortisol: high stress can engrave strong memories but also distort them (aversive memory traces).
  
  

• Serotonin and oxytocin: support long-term integration, allowing emotional memories to become stable feelings.
  
  

• Outcome: chemical balance determines whether a memory will be constructive (flexible) or rigid (aversive/anergic).
  
  

4. Narratives and digital culture

• Social media and games deliberately exploit narrative formation:
  
  

• Quick emotions → short episodic memories (scrolls, posts, likes).
  
  

• Prolonged engagement cycles (72h) → feelings and crystallized narratives (digital identities).
  
  

• Risk: a shallow culture, where identity anchors in strong emotions without attentional depth.
  
  

5. Comparative Frame – From Emotion to Narrative

6. Consequences in brain development

• Before age 25: narratives are fragile and easily hijacked by quick emotions.
  
  

• Between 25–35: metacognition matures → it becomes possible to question personal narratives and reorganize memories.
  
  

• After 35: greater stability allows critical narratives, but also risk of rigidity if based on Anergia (when emotion fails to metabolize into expression).
  
  

7. Critical Conclusion

Memory is not a static archive: it is a dynamic process of narrative construction.

• Quick emotions → seeds of recall.
  
  

• Prolonged feelings → roots of identity.
  
  

• Narratives → cultural trunks that sustain belonging.
  
  

When social media and games manipulate these cycles, our narratives may be externally molded, producing fragile and dependent identities.
Teaching adolescents how emotions become narratives gives them the power to rewrite their own story instead of following scripts imposed by algorithms.

References

• Hermans, E. J., et al. (2020). Emotion and memory interactions in the human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
  
  

• Richter-Levin, G., & Akirav, I. (2021). The amygdala-hippocampus dynamic in emotional memory. Progress in Neurobiology.
  
  

• Gilboa, A., et al. (2021). Narrative construction in memory: neural and psychological perspectives. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
  
  

• Moscovitch, M., et al. (2022). Consolidation and transformation of episodic memory. Annual Review of Psychology.
  
  

• Neshat-Doost, H. T., et al. (2023). Emotion-driven memory biases in digital environments. Cognitive Neuroscience.