The goal of the proposed research is to gain a more complete understanding of the cognitive and neural processes that yield successful and unsuccessful memory encoding. In particular, these studies will address the role of visual attention in the encoding of perceived and imagined visual object representations. The proposed research will use spatio-temporal brain imaging techniques, combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG), to study the cognitive and neural events during memory encoding that lead to later false memories, as well as to study the similarities and differences in brain activity associated with true and false memories during memory retrieval. The proposed experiments will address the mechanisms for reality-monitoring (RM) errors, which occur when one confuses imagined events with perceived events. Such errors will be induced by requiring subjects to imagine objects and showing them pictures of half of the objects. When later tested for memory for the pictures, it is expected that subjects will sometimes claim to have seen a picture of an object that they only imagined, thus making a RM error. It is expected that more vivid visual imagery of objects during encoding will lead to later RM errors by increasing the overlap in memory features of imagined and seen objects. Experiment 1 will use vividness ratings during imagery at encoding to test whether vividness of visual imagery predicts later RM errors. Experiment 2 will use interference tasks during encoding to further delineate the role of visual attention in encoding. Experiment 3 will address whether reality-monitoring errors are accompanied by recollective information during memory retrieval. The goal of the proposed research is to gain a more complete understanding of the cognitive and neural processes that yield successful and unsuccessful memory encoding. In particular, these studies will address the role of visual attention in the encoding of perceived and imagined visual object representations. The proposed research will use spatio-temporal brain imaging techniques, combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG), to study the cognitive and neural events during memory encoding that lead to later false memories, as well as to study the similarities and differences in brain activity associated with true and false memories during memory retrieval. The proposed experiments will address the mechanisms for reality-monitoring (RM) errors, which occur when one confuses imagined events with perceived events. Such errors will be induced by requiring subjects to imagine objects, and showing them pictures of half of the objects. When later tested for memory for the pictures, it is expected that subjects will sometimes claim to have seen a picture of an object that they only imagined, thus making a RM error. It is expected that more vivid visual imagery of objects during encoding will lead to later RM errors by increasing the overlap in memory features of imagined and seen objects. Experiment 1 will use vividness ratings during imagery at encoding to test whether vividness of visual imagery predicts later RM errors. Experiment 2 will use interference tasks during encoding to further delineate the role of visual attention in encoding. Experiment 3 will address whether reality-monitoring errors are accompanied by recollective information during memory retrieval. ? ?
| Gonsalves, Brian D; Kahn, Itamar; Curran, Tim et al. (2005) Memory strength and repetition suppression: multimodal imaging of medial temporal cortical contributions to recognition. Neuron 47:751-61 |
