One element of the Stanislavski system was titled emotional memory. Emotional memory requires the actor to call on the memories he or she felt when they were in a situation similar to that of their charactar. Stanislavski believed an actor needed to take emotion and personality to the stage and call upon it when playing their character.
- "Emotional memory refers to both the enhancement of memory processing due to emotional value, and the association of emotional value to an object or experience due to the presence of an emotionally active stimulus. An example of the first type of emotional memory is that very emotional events are often memorable. Another example is that pictures with high emotional content may be more memorable than pictures with little emotional value, whether the pictures are very pleasant or very unpleasant. An example of the second type of emotional memory is liking a person immediately upon meeting them because the perfume they are wearing is the same as that of someone important to you. The main idea seems to be that the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala area of the brain process emotional stimuli, and that the information from that processing modifies the processing of memories in the brain's hippocampus, and affects the later processing of similar stimuli.(...)" [1]
