scholarly journals Neural Measures of Conscious and Unconscious Memory

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken A. Paller

Neuropsychological studies of memory disorders have played a prominent role in the development of theories of memory. To test and refine such theories in future, it will be advantageous to include research that utilizes physiological measures of the neural events responsible for memory. Measures of the electrical activity of the brain in the form of event-related potentials (ERPs) provide one source of such information. Recent results suggest that these real-time measures reflect relevant encoding and retrieval operations. In particular, distinct electrical responses have been associated with recollective processing of words and with priming of visual word-form. This source of evidence can thus enrich our understanding of both the cognitive structure and neural substrates of human memory.

1999 ◽  
Vol 354 (1387) ◽  
pp. 1307-1324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony D. Wagner ◽  
Wilma Koutstaal ◽  
Daniel L. Schacter

To understand human memory, it is important to determine why some experiences are remembered whereas others are forgotten. Until recently, insights into the neural bases of human memory encoding, the processes by which information is transformed into an enduring memory trace, have primarily been derived from neuropsychological studies of humans with select brain lesions. The advent of functional neuroimaging methods, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has provided a new opportunity to gain additional understanding of how the brain supports memory formation. Importantly, the recent development of event–related fMRI methods now allows for examination of trial–by–trial differences in neural activity during encoding and of the consequences of these differences for later remembering. In this review, we consider the contributions of PET and fMRI studies to the understanding of memory encoding, placing a particular emphasis on recent event–related fMRI studies of the Dm effect: that is, differences in neural activity during encoding that are related to differences in subsequent memory. We then turn our attention to the rich literature on the Dm effect that has emerged from studies using event–related potentials (ERPs). It is hoped that the integration of findings from ERP studies, which offer higher temporal resolution, with those from event–related fMRI studies, which offer higher spatial resolution, will shed new light on when and why encoding yields subsequent remembering.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takakuni Suzuki ◽  
Kaylin E. Hill ◽  
Belel Ait Oumeziane ◽  
Dan Foti ◽  
Douglas B. Samuel

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Stampfer

This article suggests that the potential usefulness of event-related potentials in psychiatry has not been fully explored because of the limitations of various approaches to research adopted to date, and because the field is still undergoing rapid development. Newer approaches to data acquisition and methods of analysis, combined with closer co-operation between medical and physical scientists, will help to establish the practical application of these signals in psychiatric disorders and assist our understanding of psychophysiological information processing in the brain. Finally, it is suggested that psychiatrists should seek to understand these techniques and the data they generate, since they provide more direct access to measures of complex cerebral processes than current clinical methods.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goded Shahaf ◽  
Pora Kuperman ◽  
Yuval Bloch ◽  
Shahak Yariv ◽  
Yelena Granovsky

Migraine attacks can cause significant discomfort and reduced functioning for days at a time, including the pre-ictal and post-ictal periods. During the inter-ictsal period, however, migraineurs seem to function normally. It is puzzling, therefore, that event-related potentials of migraine patients often differ in the asymptomatic and inter-ictal period. Part of the electrophysiological dynamics demonstrated in the migraine cycle are attention related. In this pilot study we evaluated an easy-to-use new marker, the Brain Engagement Index (BEI), for attention monitoring during the migraine cycle. We sampled 12 migraine patients for 20 days within one calendar month. Each session consisted of subjects’ reports of stress level and migraine-related symptoms, and a 5 min EEG recording, with a 2-electrode EEG device, during an auditory oddball task. The first minute of the EEG sample was analyzed. Repetitive samples were also obtained from 10 healthy controls. The brain engagement index increased significantly during the pre-ictal (p ≈ 0.001) and the ictal (p ≈ 0.020) periods compared with the inter-ictal period. No difference was observed between the pre-ictal and ictal periods. Control subjects demonstrated intermediate Brain Engagement Index values, that is, higher than inter-ictal, yet lower than pre-ictal. Our preliminary results demonstrate the potential advantage of the use of a simple EEG system for improved prediction of migraine attacks. Further study is required to evaluate the efficacy of the Brain Engagement Index in monitoring the migraine cycle and the possible effects of interventions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Junttila ◽  
Anna-Riikka Smolander ◽  
Reima Karhila ◽  
Anastasia Giannakopoulou ◽  
Maria Uther ◽  
...  

Learning is increasingly assisted by technology. Digital games may be useful for learning, especially in children. However, more research is needed to understand the factors that induce gaming benefits to cognition. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of digital game-based learning approach in children by comparing the learning of foreign speech sounds and words in a digital game or a non-game digital application with equal amount of exposure and practice. To evaluate gaming-induced plastic changes in the brain function, we used the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response that reflects the activation of long-term memory representations for speech sounds and words. We recorded auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) from 37 school-aged Finnish-speaking children before and after playing the “Say it again, kid!” (SIAK) language-learning game where they explored game boards, produced English words aloud, and got stars as feedback from an automatic speech recognizer to proceed in the game. The learning of foreign speech sounds and words was compared in two conditions embedded in the game: a game condition and a non-game condition with the same speech production task but lacking visual game elements and feedback. The MMN amplitude increased between the pre-measurement and the post-measurement for the word trained with the game but not for the word trained with the non-game condition, suggesting that the gaming intervention enhanced learning more than the non-game intervention. The results indicate that digital game-based learning can be beneficial for children’s language learning and that gaming elements per se, not just practise time, support learning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yupeng Mei ◽  
Kunpeng Jing ◽  
Lele Chen ◽  
Rui Shi ◽  
Zhijie Song

There is a connection between the frontal negative slow wave (FNSW) and the arousal inhibition in the hedonic purchase context. To calculate the FNSW (400–800 ms), event-related potentials (ERPs) method was applied to depict the neural substrates on prudent and impulsive consumers’ behaviors within various states of promotion. Promotion types include the pure price promotion and the mixed promotion (a mixture of a charitable donation and a discount). Behaviorally, consumers response more quickly in the pure price promotion condition and they express a preference for the mixed promotion. More importantly, a larger FNSW emerged in the impulsive consumers than the prudent, suggesting that the former might tend to control their eagerness to consume hedonic items. Compared with the price promotion as the worse option, the mixed promotion as the better option caused more perceptual conflict, leading to an increase in N2 amplitude. It suggests that consumers incline to reject the worse offers. These results also reveal that people primarily have to search negative promotion information by their insight and subsequently impulsive consumers inhibit the responses to the promotion information. The method of ERPs and FNSW should be helpful for marketing researchers and professionals on hedonic consumption and sales promotion.


Author(s):  
Adil Deniz Duru ◽  
Ali Bayram ◽  
Tamer Demiralp ◽  
Ahmet Ademoglu

Event-related potentials (ERP) are transient brain responses to cognitive stimuli, and they consist of several stationary events whose temporal frequency content can be characterized in terms of oscillations or rhythms. Precise localization of electrical events in the brain, based on the ERP data recorded from the scalp, has been one of the main challenges of functional brain imaging. Several currentDensity estimation techniques for identifying the electrical sources generating the brain potentials are developed for the so-called neuroelectromagnetic inverse problem in the last three decades (Baillet, Mosher, & Leahy, 2001; Koles, 1998; Michela, Murraya, Lantza, Gonzaleza, Spinellib, & Grave de Peraltaa, 2004; Scherg & von Cramon, 1986).


2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 823-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márk Molnár

We discuss whether low-dimensional chaos and even nonlinear processes can be traced in the electrical activity of the brain. Experimental data show that the dimensional complexity of the EEG decreases during event-related potentials associated with cognitive effort. This probably represents increased nonlinear cooperation between different neural systems during sensory information processing.


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