Thesis advisor: Elizabeth A. Kensinger / Emotion enhances memory longevity and vividness. Perceiving an experience as emotional, as well as the autonomic and functional brain responses involved in initially encoding an emotional experience, have been theorized to “tag” these memories. Tagged memories may then be prioritized for consolidation during sleep. However, direct evidence supporting this theory is sparse. The aim of the present study was to determine which encoding-related indicators of memory tagging interact with post-encoding sleep oscillations to promote emotional memory retention and vividness. To test this, participants incidentally encoded positive, neutral and negative multisensory stimuli during 3T fMRI scanning with concurrent heart rate monitoring. Participants provided emotional intensity ratings after each stimulus presentation. Following a 120-min post-encoding nap opportunity recorded with polysomnography, participants completed a surprise memory test. Memory for emotional and neutral stimuli was equivalent, though emotional stimuli tended to be remembered more vividly. Perceived emotional intensity, but not heart rate deceleration (HRD) magnitude or functional brain activity, was diagnostic of later successful retrieval of emotional, but not neutral stimuli. Higher REM sleep theta power during the nap was associated with a greater emotional intensity (EI) subsequent memory effect (i.e., higher EI for later remembered compared to forgotten stimuli) for positive stimuli, which were also remembered more vividly. Higher NREM spindle density was associated with a greater EI subsequent memory effect for neutral stimuli and lesser EI subsequent memory effect for negative stimuli. Lastly, higher numbers of NREM spindle-slow oscillation coupling events predicted a negative relationship between perceived emotional intensity at encoding and memory vividness for negative stimuli. Taken together, the present findings suggest that subjective, rather than objective, encoding-related arousal responses acted as emotion “tags”. How subjective arousal impacted later memory varied as a function of the memory’s emotion category and REM and NREM-specific oscillations. Future work is needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms for these observed effects. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.

Existing models of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) are broad and do not provide information about how to improve existing interventions. The purpose of the current study is to extend the empirical application of a disgust model of FSD (de Jong, van Overveld, & Borg, 2013) to a population of young women reporting difficulties with sexual desire and/or arousal and related distress. Sixty college-aged females participated in the study and were placed into two groups based upon their reports of sexual functioning and sexual distress: a control group (i.e., no sexual difficulties or distress) and a clinical group (i.e., difficulties with sexual desire and/or arousal and accompanying distress). Participants were attached to physiological equipment and shown images displaying neutral, positive, disgusting, and erotic content. It was hypothesized that the clinical group would show more evidence of disgust (via affective and autonomic responses) than the control group. Consistent with hypotheses, no group differences were found in any of the affective or autonomic measures during presentation of the neutral, positive, or disgust images. Group differences during presentation of the erotic images (i.e., in facial EMG, heart rate, and self-report affective ratings) and follow-up analyses provided preliminary evidence for generalizing the disgust model of female sexual dysfunction beyond disorders of sexual pain, at least among some women. Exploratory analyses implicated a relationship between a history of sexual victimization and self-report disgust ratings of erotic images. Future research should further explore these relationships in order to shed more light on how disgust-based mechanisms impact the onset and maintenance of female sexual dysfunction.