Emotional memory: From affective relevance to arousal

Arousal is typically conceived as a key component of emotional response. We describe here the psychological processes thought to elicit arousal - in particular, the processes involved in the appraisal of affective relevance. The key role of relevance in attentional and memory processing, and its links with arousal, is discussed with respect to the GANE (glutamate amplifies noradrenergic effects) model described by Mather et al.