scholarly journals Rapid Communication: The loss of residual visual memories over the passage of time

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Mercer ◽  
Paul Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Present Experiment ◽  
Intertrial Interval ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Probe Stimulus ◽  
Previous Trial ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Critical Interest

There has been extensive discussion of the causes of short-term forgetting. Some accounts suggest that time plays an important role in the loss of representations, whereas other models reject this notion and explain all forgetting through interference processes. The present experiment used the recent-probes task to investigate whether residual visual information is lost over the passage of time. On each trial, three unusual target objects were displayed and followed by a probe stimulus. The task was to determine whether the probe matched any of the targets, and the next trial commenced after an intertrial interval lasting 300 ms, 3.3 s, or 8.3 s. Of critical interest were recent negative (RN) trials, on which the probe matched a target from the previous trial. These were contrasted against nonrecent negative (NRN) trials, in which the probe had not been seen in the recent past. RN trials damaged performance and slowed reaction times in comparison to NRN trials, highlighting interference. However, this interfering effect diminished as the intertrial interval was lengthened, suggesting that residual visual information is lost as time passes. This finding is difficult to reconcile with interference-based models and suggests that time plays some role in forgetting.

Time after time: support for memory accounts of temporal preparation.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Butler ◽  
Samuel Ngabo ◽  
Marcus Missal
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Previous Trial ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Temporal Preparation ◽  
Subsequent Trial ◽  
Higher Order Effects

Complex biological systems build up temporal expectations to facilitate adaptive responses to environmental events, in order to minimise costs associated with incorrect responses, and maximise the benefits of correct responses. In the lab, this is clearly demonstrated in tasks which show faster response times when the period between warning (S1) and target stimulus (S2) on the previous trial was short and slower when the previous trial foreperiod was long. The mechanisms driving such higher order effects in temporal preparation paradigms are still under debate, with key theories proposing that either i) the foreperiod leads to automatic modulation of the arousal system which influences responses on the subsequent trial, or ii) that exposure to a foreperiod results in the creation of a memory trace which is used to guide responses on the subsequent trial. Here we provide data which extends the evidence base for the memory accounts, by showing that previous foreperiod exposures are cumulative with reaction times shortening after repeated exposures; whilst also demonstrate that the higher order effects associated with a foreperiod remain active for several trials.

Auditory comprehension and aging: Decline in syntactic processing

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loraine K. Obler ◽  
Deborah Fein ◽  
Marjorie Nicholas ◽  
Martin L. Albert
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Auditory Comprehension ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Mental Control ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neuropsychological Tasks

ABSTRACTComprehension of six syntactic structures was tested across four age groups. Each structure was presented with both plausible and implausible content. The contribution of cognitive nonlinguistic factors important for comprehension (attention, short-term memory, and mental control) was tested via standard neuropsychological tasks. Sixty-six women aged 30–79 were tested. Both errors and reaction times increased with age, especially for more complex syntactic types and implausible sentences. The neuropsychological factors tested contributed minimally to an age-related decline in comprehension, suggesting that the subtle breakdown seen in syntactic processing may be a language-specific impairment.

scholarly journals Is working memory stored along a logarithmic timeline? Converging evidence from neuroscience, behavior and models

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inder Singh ◽  
Zoran Tiganj ◽  
Marc Howard
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Temporal Organization ◽  
Search Model ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

A growing body of evidence suggests that short-term memory does not only store the identity of recently experienced stimuli, but also information about when they were presented. This representation of ‘what’ happened ‘when’ constitutes a neural timeline of recent past. Behavioral results suggest that people can sequentially access memories for the recent past, as if they were stored along a timeline to which attention is sequentially directed. In the short-term judgment of recency (JOR) task, the time to choose between two probe items depends on the recency of the more recent probe but not on the recency of the more remote probe. This pattern of results suggests a backward self-terminating search model. We review recent neural evidence from the macaque lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) (Tiganj, Cromer, Roy, Miller, & Howard, in press) and behavioral evidence from human JOR task (Singh & Howard, 2017) bearing on this question. Notably, both lines of evidence suggest that the timeline is logarithmically compressed as predicted by Weber-Fechner scaling. Taken together, these findings provide an integrative perspective on temporal organization and neural underpinnings of short-term memory.

The Effects of Nicotine on Attention, Information Processing, and Short-Term Memory in Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer Type

1989 ◽  
Vol 154 (6) ◽  
pp. 797-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Sahakian ◽  
Gemma Jones ◽  
Raymond Levy ◽  
Jeffrey Gray ◽  
David Warburton
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Marked Improvement ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Critical Flicker Fusion ◽  
Alzheimer Type ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Flickering Light ◽  
Flicker Fusion

Nicotine in patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) producted a significant and marked improvement in discriminative sensitivity and reaction times on a computerised test of attention and information processing. Nicotine also improved the ability of DAT patients to detect a flickering light in a critical flicker fusion test. These results suggest that nicotine may be acting on cortical mechanisms involved in visual perception and attention, and support the hypothesis that acetylcholine transmission modulates vigilance and discrimination. Nicotine may therefore be of some value in treating deficits in attention and information processing in DAT patients.

scholarly journals Using AI-Based Classification Techniques to Process EEG Data Collected during the Visual Short-Term Memory Assessment

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milos Antonijevic ◽  
Miodrag Zivkovic ◽  
Sladjana Arsic ◽  
Aleksandar Jevremovic
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Memory Assessment ◽  
Visual Short Term Memory ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Short Period

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is defined as the ability to remember a small amount of visual information, such as colors and shapes, during a short period of time. VSTM is a part of short-term memory, which can hold information up to 30 seconds. In this paper, we present the results of research where we classified the data gathered by using an electroencephalogram (EEG) during a VSTM experiment. The experiment was performed with 12 participants that were required to remember as many details as possible from the two images, displayed for 1 minute. The first assessment was done in an isolated environment, while the second assessment was done in front of the other participants, in order to increase the stress of the examinee. The classification of the EEG data was done by using four algorithms: Naive Bayes, support vector, KNN, and random forest. The results obtained show that AI-based classification could be successfully used in the proposed way, since we were able to correctly classify the order of the images presented 90.12% of the time and type of the displayed image 90.51% of the time.

scholarly journals Stable maintenance of multiple representational formats in human visual short-term memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (51) ◽  
pp. 32329-32339
Author(s):  
Jing Liu ◽  
Hui Zhang ◽  
Tao Yu ◽  
Duanyu Ni ◽  
Liankun Ren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Visual Short Term Memory ◽  
Stable Maintenance

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) enables humans to form a stable and coherent representation of the external world. However, the nature and temporal dynamics of the neural representations in VSTM that support this stability are barely understood. Here we combined human intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings with analyses using deep neural networks and semantic models to probe the representational format and temporal dynamics of information in VSTM. We found clear evidence that VSTM maintenance occurred in two distinct representational formats which originated from different encoding periods. The first format derived from an early encoding period (250 to 770 ms) corresponded to higher-order visual representations. The second format originated from a late encoding period (1,000 to 1,980 ms) and contained abstract semantic representations. These representational formats were overall stable during maintenance, with no consistent transformation across time. Nevertheless, maintenance of both representational formats showed substantial arrhythmic fluctuations, i.e., waxing and waning in irregular intervals. The increases of the maintained representational formats were specific to the phases of hippocampal low-frequency activity. Our results demonstrate that human VSTM simultaneously maintains representations at different levels of processing, from higher-order visual information to abstract semantic representations, which are stably maintained via coupling to hippocampal low-frequency activity.

The hands have it: Hand specific vision of touch enhances touch perception and somatosensory evoked potential

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Malcolm ◽  
Karen Reilly ◽  
Jérémie Mattout ◽  
Roméo Salemme ◽  
Olivier Bertrand ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Evoked Potential ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Tactile Perception ◽  
Somatosensory Evoked Potential ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
Temporal Cues ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Our ability to accurately discriminate information from one sensory modality is often influenced by information from the other senses. Previous research indicates that tactile perception on the hand may be enhanced if participants look at a hand (compared to a neutral object) and if visual information about the origin of touch conveys temporal and/or spatial congruency. The current experiment further assessed the effects of non-informative vision on tactile perception. Participants made speeded discrimination responses (digit 2 or digit 5 of their right hand) to supra-threshold electro-cutaneous stimulation while viewing a video showing a pointer, in a static position or moving (dynamic), towards the same or different digit of a hand or to the corresponding spatial location on a non-corporeal object (engine). Therefore, besides manipulating whether a visual contact was spatially congruent to the simultaneously felt touch, we also manipulated the nature of the recipient object (hand vs. engine). Behaviourally, the temporal cues provided by the dynamic visual information about an upcoming touch decreased reaction times. Additionally, a greater enhancement in tactile discrimination was present when participants viewed a spatially congruent contact compared to a spatially incongruent contact. Most importantly, this visually driven improvement was greater for the view-hand condition compared to the view-object condition. Spatially-congruent, hand-specific visual events also produced the greatest amplitude in the P50 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP). We conclude that tactile perception is enhanced when vision provides non-predictive spatio-temporal cues and that these effects are specifically enhanced when viewing a hand.

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