Abstract: Recently, researches in emotional memory consistently revealed that memory performance is enhanced for central or core features of emotional events but memory for peripheral or background features is not enhanced and may even be impaired, named emotional memory trade-offs effects or the emotion-induced memory trade-offs effects. The effects suggest that emotional memory have selectivity and emotional arousal may evoke some kinds of memory selectivity effects, which are strongly universal and stable, but impacted by a number of subjective and objective factors in some situations. Some theoretical approaches discussed the potential mechanisms and behavioral evidences in attentional distribution, encoding and post-encoding processes were increasing gradually. However, relevant studies exploring the neural mechanisms are rare. The neural and genetic mechanisms underlying the effects should be emphasized and emotional face expressions-evoked memory trade-offs effects will be discussed in future.

Key words: emotional memory, trade-off effect, enhancement effect, detrimental effect