During memory retrieval a subset of the brain regions active during encoding reactivate. The specificity of this reactivation and its interaction with emotion are still unclear. In four original studies we explored content-specificity, emotional modulation of memory reactivation in the cortex during conscious retrieval, as well as the impact of brain lesions on reactivation. The results show that reactivation reflects retrieved content (faces vs words) and is modulated by emotion. Lesions in the medial temporal lobe can impair such reactivation and disturb the emotional modulation. Our results also show that the reactivation follows the subjective memory experience rather than the activation related to the actual stimuli present at encoding. Finally we also measured reactivation for faces after emotional induction and found enhanced reactivation when the emotion of the induction and face expression were congruent. We conclude that cortical reactivations during conscious memory retrieval are content-specific and modulated by emotional contexts.