Neuroscience is witnessing growing interest in understanding brain mechanisms of memory
formation for emotionally arousing events, a development closely related to renewed interest in
the concept of memory consolidation. Extensive research in animals implicates stress hormones
and the amygdaloid complex as key,interacting modulators of memory consolidation for emotional
events. Considerable evidence suggests that the amygdala is not a site of long-term explicit or
declarative memory storage, but serves to influence memory-storage processes in other brain
regions, such as the hippocampus, striatum and neocortex. Human-subject studies confirm the
prediction of animal work that the amygdala is involved with the formation of enhanced declarative
memory for emotionally arousing events.