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Both in every day life and in scientific work it has always been indisputable that emotions and memory are closely related to each other. However the specifics and precise nature of the interrelationship still remain controversial even today. For example, it is not yet sufficiently resolved in which way different factors, such as the intensity or type of emotion, can influence memory.
Here the principal psycho-physiological approaches are presented, which detail the interrelationship between emotions and memory, and which were developed from the 16th century to the 19th century when experimental memory research was first begun by Hermann Ebbinghaus. Assuming that emotions and memory are linked by a common physiological mechanism, scientists have long postulated the existence of mediating factors. In the 16th century, Philipp Melanchthon and Timothy Bright supposed that the degree of moisture and the temperature in the brain were such mediators. Juan Huarte, however, was convinced that the amount of light in the brain ventricles was the link between emotions and memory. In the 17th century, Rene Descartes and Thomas Willis emphasized the importance of the size of special brain pores as the mediating factor whereas in the second half of the 18th century, Charles Bonnet and David Hartley explained the relationship between emotions and memory as vibrations of brain fibers. All these propositions were based on concrete analogies derived from physics, and were mainly accepted only because of their plausibility. Empirical methods to disprove them did not exist. At the beginning of the 19th century Franz Josef Gall's doctrine became increasingly influential. He assigned different mental functions to different cortical areas, and thus viewed emotions and memory as separate entities. This might be one reason why the concept of memory and emotions as being intertwined functions fell into disuse until Hermann Ebbinghaus, Theodule Ribot, and Theodor Ziehen among others, once again emphasized that the two processes are linked. From a historical point of view Rapaport's conviction that an overhasty physiological analysis of emotions prevented researchers from recognizing the relationship between emotions and memory must be rejected.
