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Dissociable neural routes to successful prospective memory.

ABSTRACT: Identifying the processes by which people remember to execute an intention at an appropriate moment (prospective memory) remains a fundamental theoretical challenge. According to one account, top-down attentional control is required to maintain activation of the intention, initiate intention retrieval, or support monitoring. A diverging account suggests that bottom-up, spontaneous retrieval can be triggered by cues that have been associated with the intention and that sustained attentional processes are not required. We used a specialized experimental design and functional MRI methods to selectively marshal and identify each process. Results revealed a clear dissociation. One prospective-memory task recruited sustained activity in attentional-control areas, such as the anterior prefrontal cortex; the other engaged purely transient activity in parietal and ventral brain regions associated with attentional capture, target detection, and episodic retrieval. These patterns provide critical evidence that there are two neural routes to prospective memory, with each route emerging under different circumstances.

SUBMITTER: McDaniel MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4398313 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Dissociable neural routes to successful prospective memory.

McDaniel Mark A MA Lamontagne Pamela P Beck Stefanie M SM Scullin Michael K MK Braver Todd S TS

Psychological science 20130801 9

Identifying the processes by which people remember to execute an intention at an appropriate moment (prospective memory) remains a fundamental theoretical challenge. According to one account, top-down attentional control is required to maintain activation of the intention, initiate intention retrieval, or support monitoring. A diverging account suggests that bottom-up, spontaneous retrieval can be triggered by cues that have been associated with the intention and that sustained attentional proce ...[more]

PMID: 23907544

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Project description:As the stream of experience unfolds, our memory system rapidly transforms current inputs into long-lasting meaningful memories. A putative neural mechanism that strongly influences how input elements are transformed into meaningful memory codes relies on the ability to integrate them with existing structures of knowledge or schemas. However, it is not yet clear whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding. In the current investigation, we examined the encoding-dependent nature of this phenomenon in humans. We showed that actively integrating words with congruent semantic information provided by a category cue enhances memory for words and increases false recall. The memory effect of such active integration with congruent information was robust, even with an interference task occurring right after each encoding word list. In addition, via electroencephalography, we show in 2 separate studies that the onset of the neural signals of successful encoding appeared early (∼400 ms) during the encoding of congruent words. That the neural signals of successful encoding of congruent and incongruent information followed similarly ∼200 ms later suggests that this earlier neural response contributed to memory formation. We propose that the encoding of events that are congruent with readily available contextual semantics can trigger an accelerated onset of the neural mechanisms, supporting the integration of semantic information with the event input. This faster onset would result in a long-lasting and meaningful memory trace for the event but, at the same time, make it difficult to distinguish it from plausible but never encoded events (i.e., related false memories).Significance statementConceptual or schema congruence has a strong influence on long-term memory. However, the question of whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding has yet to be clarified. We investigated the neural mechanisms reflecting how the active integration of words with congruent semantic categories enhances memory for words and increases false recall of semantically related words. We analyzed event-related potentials during encoding and showed that the onset of the neural signals of successful encoding appeared early (∼400 ms) during the encoding of congruent words. Our findings indicate that congruent events can trigger an accelerated onset of neural encoding mechanisms supporting the integration of semantic information with the event input.

Dataset Information

Dissociable neural routes to successful prospective memory.

Publications

Dissociable neural routes to successful prospective memory.

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