In Living Memory: The Dying Art of Learning Poetry and a Case for Revival

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pullinger, Debbie

2012-01-01

This article considers the practice of learning poems and the value of poetry in the memory, and emerges from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Drawing on the subset of findings in relation to learning and memory, the essay locates the…

Are Face and Object Recognition Independent? A Neurocomputational Modeling Exploration.

PubMed

Wang, Panqu; Gauthier, Isabel; Cottrell, Garrison

2016-04-01

Are face and object recognition abilities independent? Although it is commonly believed that they are, Gauthier et al. [Gauthier, I., McGugin, R. W., Richler, J. J., Herzmann, G., Speegle, M., & VanGulick, A. E. Experience moderates overlap between object and face recognition, suggesting a common ability. Journal of Vision, 14, 7, 2014] recently showed that these abilities become more correlated as experience with nonface categories increases. They argued that there is a single underlying visual ability, v, that is expressed in performance with both face and nonface categories as experience grows. Using the Cambridge Face Memory Test and the Vanderbilt Expertise Test, they showed that the shared variance between Cambridge Face Memory Test and Vanderbilt Expertise Test performance increases monotonically as experience increases. Here, we address why a shared resource across different visual domains does not lead to competition and to an inverse correlation in abilities? We explain this conundrum using our neurocomputational model of face and object processing ["The Model", TM, Cottrell, G. W., & Hsiao, J. H. Neurocomputational models of face processing. In A. J. Calder, G. Rhodes, M. Johnson, & J. Haxby (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of face perception. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011]. We model the domain general ability v as the available computational resources (number of hidden units) in the mapping from input to label and experience as the frequency of individual exemplars in an object category appearing during network training. Our results show that, as in the behavioral data, the correlation between subordinate level face and object recognition accuracy increases as experience grows. We suggest that different domains do not compete for resources because the relevant features are shared between faces and objects. The essential power of experience is to generate a "spreading transform" for faces (separating them in representational space) that generalizes to objects that must be individuated. Interestingly, when the task of the network is basic level categorization, no increase in the correlation between domains is observed. Hence, our model predicts that it is the type of experience that matters and that the source of the correlation is in the fusiform face area, rather than in cortical areas that subserve basic level categorization. This result is consistent with our previous modeling elucidating why the FFA is recruited for novel domains of expertise [Tong, M. H., Joyce, C. A., & Cottrell, G. W. Why is the fusiform face area recruited for novel categories of expertise? A neurocomputational investigation. Brain Research, 1202, 14-24, 2008].

Social and attention-to-detail subclusters of autistic traits differentially predict looking at eyes and face identity recognition ability.

PubMed

Davis, Joshua; McKone, Elinor; Zirnsak, Marc; Moore, Tirin; O'Kearney, Richard; Apthorp, Deborah; Palermo, Romina

2017-02-01

This study distinguished between different subclusters of autistic traits in the general population and examined the relationships between these subclusters, looking at the eyes of faces, and the ability to recognize facial identity. Using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) measure in a university-recruited sample, we separate the social aspects of autistic traits (i.e., those related to communication and social interaction; AQ-Social) from the non-social aspects, particularly attention-to-detail (AQ-Attention). We provide the first evidence that these social and non-social aspects are associated differentially with looking at eyes: While AQ-Social showed the commonly assumed tendency towards reduced looking at eyes, AQ-Attention was associated with increased looking at eyes. We also report that higher attention-to-detail (AQ-Attention) was then indirectly related to improved face recognition, mediated by increased number of fixations to the eyes during face learning. Higher levels of socially relevant autistic traits (AQ-Social) trended in the opposite direction towards being related to poorer face recognition (significantly so in females on the Cambridge Face Memory Test). There was no evidence of any mediated relationship between AQ-Social and face recognition via reduced looking at the eyes. These different effects of AQ-Attention and AQ-Social suggest face-processing studies in Autism Spectrum Disorder might similarly benefit from considering symptom subclusters. Additionally, concerning mechanisms of face recognition, our results support the view that more looking at eyes predicts better face memory. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Cortical Thickness in Fusiform Face Area Predicts Face and Object Recognition Performance

PubMed Central

McGugin, Rankin W.; Van Gulick, Ana E.; Gauthier, Isabel

2016-01-01

The fusiform face area (FFA) is defined by its selectivity for faces. Several studies have shown that the response of FFA to non-face objects can predict behavioral performance for these objects. However, one possible account is that experts pay more attention to objects in their domain of expertise, driving signals up. Here we show an effect of expertise with non-face objects in FFA that cannot be explained by differential attention to objects of expertise. We explore the relationship between cortical thickness of FFA and face and object recognition using the Cambridge Face Memory Test and Vanderbilt Expertise Test, respectively. We measured cortical thickness in functionally-defined regions in a group of men who evidenced functional expertise effects for cars in FFA. Performance with faces and objects together accounted for approximately 40% of the variance in cortical thickness of several FFA patches. While subjects with a thicker FFA cortex performed better with vehicles, those with a thinner FFA cortex performed better with faces and living objects. The results point to a domain-general role of FFA in object perception and reveal an interesting double dissociation that does not contrast faces and objects, but rather living and non-living objects. PMID:26439272

Impaired recognition of faces and objects in dyslexia: Evidence for ventral stream dysfunction?

PubMed

Sigurdardottir, Heida Maria; Ívarsson, Eysteinn; Kristinsdóttir, Kristjana; Kristjánsson, Árni

2015-09-01

The objective of this study was to establish whether or not dyslexics are impaired at the recognition of faces and other complex nonword visual objects. This would be expected based on a meta-analysis revealing that children and adult dyslexics show functional abnormalities within the left fusiform gyrus, a brain region high up in the ventral visual stream, which is thought to support the recognition of words, faces, and other objects. 20 adult dyslexics (M = 29 years) and 20 matched typical readers (M = 29 years) participated in the study. One dyslexic-typical reader pair was excluded based on Adult Reading History Questionnaire scores and IS-FORM reading scores. Performance was measured on 3 high-level visual processing tasks: the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test, and the Vanderbilt Expertise Test. People with dyslexia are impaired in their recognition of faces and other visually complex objects. Their holistic processing of faces appears to be intact, suggesting that dyslexics may instead be specifically impaired at part-based processing of visual objects. The difficulty that people with dyslexia experience with reading might be the most salient manifestation of a more general high-level visual deficit. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

A Cognitive Architecture for Solving Ill-Structured Problems

DTIC Science & Technology

1997-08-01

R. C. (1982). Dynamic memory. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press. Selfridge, 0. G., & Neisser , U . (1960). Pattern recognition by machine...Page 1 . In tro d u ctio n...1 1.1 Relevance to the ARI M ission ............................................................................... 1 1.2 Components of Analogy U se

About-face on face recognition ability and holistic processing

PubMed Central

Richler, Jennifer J.; Floyd, R. Jackie; Gauthier, Isabel

2015-01-01

Previous work found a small but significant relationship between holistic processing measured with the composite task and face recognition ability measured by the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT; Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006). Surprisingly, recent work using a different measure of holistic processing (Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test [VHPT-F]; Richler, Floyd, & Gauthier, 2014) and a larger sample found no evidence for such a relationship. In Experiment 1 we replicate this unexpected result, finding no relationship between holistic processing (VHPT-F) and face recognition ability (CFMT). A key difference between the VHPT-F and other holistic processing measures is that unique face parts are used on each trial in the VHPT-F, unlike in other tasks where a small set of face parts repeat across the experiment. In Experiment 2, we test the hypothesis that correlations between the CFMT and holistic processing tasks are driven by stimulus repetition that allows for learning during the composite task. Consistent with our predictions, CFMT performance was correlated with holistic processing in the composite task when a small set of face parts repeated over trials, but not when face parts did not repeat. A meta-analysis confirms that relationships between the CFMT and holistic processing depend on stimulus repetition. These results raise important questions about what is being measured by the CFMT, and challenge current assumptions about why faces are processed holistically. PMID:26223027

About-face on face recognition ability and holistic processing.

PubMed

Richler, Jennifer J; Floyd, R Jackie; Gauthier, Isabel

2015-01-01

Previous work found a small but significant relationship between holistic processing measured with the composite task and face recognition ability measured by the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT; Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006). Surprisingly, recent work using a different measure of holistic processing (Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test [VHPT-F]; Richler, Floyd, & Gauthier, 2014) and a larger sample found no evidence for such a relationship. In Experiment 1 we replicate this unexpected result, finding no relationship between holistic processing (VHPT-F) and face recognition ability (CFMT). A key difference between the VHPT-F and other holistic processing measures is that unique face parts are used on each trial in the VHPT-F, unlike in other tasks where a small set of face parts repeat across the experiment. In Experiment 2, we test the hypothesis that correlations between the CFMT and holistic processing tasks are driven by stimulus repetition that allows for learning during the composite task. Consistent with our predictions, CFMT performance was correlated with holistic processing in the composite task when a small set of face parts repeated over trials, but not when face parts did not repeat. A meta-analysis confirms that relationships between the CFMT and holistic processing depend on stimulus repetition. These results raise important questions about what is being measured by the CFMT, and challenge current assumptions about why faces are processed holistically.

Methylphenidate Improves Visual-Spatial Memory in Children with Attention-Deficit- hyperactivity Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bedard, Anne-Claude; Martinussen, Rhonda; Ickowicz, Abel; Tannock, Rosemary

2004-01-01

Objective: To investigate the effect of methylphenidate (MPH) on visual-spatial memory, as measured by subtests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB), in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Visual-spatial memory is a core component of working memory that has been shown to be impaired in…

Do congenital prosopagnosia and the other-race effect affect the same face recognition mechanisms?

PubMed Central

Esins, Janina; Schultz, Johannes; Wallraven, Christian; Bülthoff, Isabelle

2014-01-01

Congenital prosopagnosia (CP), an innate impairment in recognizing faces, as well as the other-race effect (ORE), a disadvantage in recognizing faces of foreign races, both affect face recognition abilities. Are the same face processing mechanisms affected in both situations? To investigate this question, we tested three groups of 21 participants: German congenital prosopagnosics, South Korean participants and German controls on three different tasks involving faces and objects. First we tested all participants on the Cambridge Face Memory Test in which they had to recognize Caucasian target faces in a 3-alternative-forced-choice task. German controls performed better than Koreans who performed better than prosopagnosics. In the second experiment, participants rated the similarity of Caucasian faces that differed parametrically in either features or second-order relations (configuration). Prosopagnosics were less sensitive to configuration changes than both other groups. In addition, while all groups were more sensitive to changes in features than in configuration, this difference was smaller in Koreans. In the third experiment, participants had to learn exemplars of artificial objects, natural objects, and faces and recognize them among distractors of the same category. Here prosopagnosics performed worse than participants in the other two groups only when they were tested on face stimuli. In sum, Koreans and prosopagnosic participants differed from German controls in different ways in all tests. This suggests that German congenital prosopagnosics perceive Caucasian faces differently than do Korean participants. Importantly, our results suggest that different processing impairments underlie the ORE and CP. PMID:25324757

Investigating the Influence of Biological Sex on the Behavioral and Neural Basis of Face Recognition

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Abstract There is interest in understanding the influence of biological factors, like sex, on the organization of brain function. We investigated the influence of biological sex on the behavioral and neural basis of face recognition in healthy, young adults. In behavior, there were no sex differences on the male Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT)+ or the female CFMT+ (that we created) and no own-gender bias (OGB) in either group. We evaluated the functional topography of ventral stream organization by measuring the magnitude and functional neural size of 16 individually defined face-, two object-, and two place-related regions bilaterally. There were no sex differences in any of these measures of neural function in any of the regions of interest (ROIs) or in group level comparisons. These findings reveal that men and women have similar category-selective topographic organization in the ventral visual pathway. Next, in a separate task, we measured activation within the 16 face-processing ROIs specifically during recognition of target male and female faces. There were no sex differences in the magnitude of the neural responses in any face-processing region. Furthermore, there was no OGB in the neural responses of either the male or female participants. Our findings suggest that face recognition behavior, including the OGB, is not inherently sexually dimorphic. Face recognition is an essential skill for navigating human social interactions, which is reflected equally in the behavior and neural architecture of men and women. PMID:28497111

Investigating the Influence of Biological Sex on the Behavioral and Neural Basis of Face Recognition.

PubMed

Scherf, K Suzanne; Elbich, Daniel B; Motta-Mena, Natalie V

2017-01-01

There is interest in understanding the influence of biological factors, like sex, on the organization of brain function. We investigated the influence of biological sex on the behavioral and neural basis of face recognition in healthy, young adults. In behavior, there were no sex differences on the male Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT)+ or the female CFMT+ (that we created) and no own-gender bias (OGB) in either group. We evaluated the functional topography of ventral stream organization by measuring the magnitude and functional neural size of 16 individually defined face-, two object-, and two place-related regions bilaterally. There were no sex differences in any of these measures of neural function in any of the regions of interest (ROIs) or in group level comparisons. These findings reveal that men and women have similar category-selective topographic organization in the ventral visual pathway. Next, in a separate task, we measured activation within the 16 face-processing ROIs specifically during recognition of target male and female faces. There were no sex differences in the magnitude of the neural responses in any face-processing region. Furthermore, there was no OGB in the neural responses of either the male or female participants. Our findings suggest that face recognition behavior, including the OGB, is not inherently sexually dimorphic. Face recognition is an essential skill for navigating human social interactions, which is reflected equally in the behavior and neural architecture of men and women.

Individual Differences in Face Identity Processing with Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation.

PubMed

Xu, Buyun; Liu-Shuang, Joan; Rossion, Bruno; Tanaka, James

2017-08-01

A growing body of literature suggests that human individuals differ in their ability to process face identity. These findings mainly stem from explicit behavioral tasks, such as the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). However, it remains an open question whether such individual differences can be found in the absence of an explicit face identity task and when faces have to be individualized at a single glance. In the current study, we tested 49 participants with a recently developed fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm [Liu-Shuang, J., Norcia, A. M., & Rossion, B. An objective index of individual face discrimination in the right occipitotemporal cortex by means of fast periodic oddball stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 52, 57-72, 2014] in EEG to rapidly, objectively, and implicitly quantify face identity processing. In the FPVS paradigm, one face identity (A) was presented at the frequency of 6 Hz, allowing only one gaze fixation, with different face identities (B, C, D) presented every fifth face (1.2 Hz; i.e., AAAABAAAACAAAAD…). Results showed a face individuation response at 1.2 Hz and its harmonics, peaking over occipitotemporal locations. The magnitude of this response showed high reliability across different recording sequences and was significant in all but two participants, with the magnitude and lateralization differing widely across participants. There was a modest but significant correlation between the individuation response amplitude and the performance of the behavioral CFMT task, despite the fact that CFMT and FPVS measured different aspects of face identity processing. Taken together, the current study highlights the FPVS approach as a promising means for studying individual differences in face identity processing.

Face-blind for other-race faces: Individual differences in other-race recognition impairments.

PubMed

Wan, Lulu; Crookes, Kate; Dawel, Amy; Pidcock, Madeleine; Hall, Ashleigh; McKone, Elinor

2017-01-01

We report the existence of a previously undescribed group of people, namely individuals who are so poor at recognition of other-race faces that they meet criteria for clinical-level impairment (i.e., they are "face-blind" for other-race faces). Testing 550 participants, and using the well-validated Cambridge Face Memory Test for diagnosing face blindness, results show the rate of other-race face blindness to be nontrivial, specifically 8.1% of Caucasians and Asians raised in majority own-race countries. Results also show risk factors for other-race face blindness to include: a lack of interracial contact; and being at the lower end of the normal range of general face recognition ability (i.e., even for own-race faces); but not applying less individuating effort to other-race than own-race faces. Findings provide a potential resolution of contradictory evidence concerning the importance of the other-race effect (ORE), by explaining how it is possible for the mean ORE to be modest in size (suggesting a genuine but minor problem), and simultaneously for individuals to suffer major functional consequences in the real world (e.g., eyewitness misidentification of other-race offenders leading to wrongful imprisonment). Findings imply that, in legal settings, evaluating an eyewitness's chance of having made an other-race misidentification requires information about the underlying face recognition abilities of the individual witness. Additionally, analogy with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize even own-race faces) suggests everyday social interactions with other-race people, such as those between colleagues in the workplace, will be seriously impacted by the ORE in some people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Executive functioning in people with obsessive-compulsive personality traits: evidence of modest impairment.

PubMed

García-Villamisar, Domingo; Dattilo, John

2015-06-01

Investigations of executive dysfunctions among people with obsessive-compulsive personality disorders (OCPD) have yielded inconsistent results. The authors speculate that obsessive-compulsive personality traits (OCPT) from a nonclinical population may be associated with specific executive dysfunctions relative to working memory, attentional set-shifting, and planning. A sample consisting of 79 adults (39 females, 40 males) was divided into high and low scorers on the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4 (PDQ-4; Hyler, 1994). In addition, these participants were interviewed using the SCID-II (First, Spitzer, Gibbon & Williams, 1997) to confirm the presence of symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality. Participants completed a battery of executive tasks associated with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), including Spatial Working Memory, Intradimensional/Extradimensional (ID/ED), Attentional Set-Shifting, and Stockings of Cambridge. Also, self-report measures of executive functions as well as of anxiety and depressive symptoms were administered. The analysis of covariance revealed significant differences between participants with OCPT and controls on the Spatial Working Memory tasks, ID/ED tasks, Stockings of Cambridge, and the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX). Nevertheless, there were no significant differences in the number of problems solved in minimum movements. These results suggest that executive dysfunctions are present in people with prominent OCPT and that there is a high convergence between clinical and ecological measures of executive functions in people with obsessive personality traits.

Episodic Visual Learning/Memory and Attentional Flexibility in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder After Clinically Effective Electroconvulsive Therapy.

PubMed

Kalogerakou, Stamatina; Oulis, Panagiotis; Anyfandi, Eleni; Konstantakopoulos, George; Papakosta, Vasiliki-Maria; Kontis, Dimitrios; Theochari, Eirini; Angelopoulos, Elias; Zervas, Ioannis M; Mellon, Robert C; Papageorgiou, Charalambos C; Tsaltas, Eleftheria

2015-12-01

This study is a follow-up of a previous one reporting that the neuropsychological profile of pharmacoresistant patients with major depressive disorder referred for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, ECT group) contrasted with that of their pharmacorespondent counterparts (NECT group). The NECT group exhibited severe visuospatial memory and minor executive deficits; the ECT group presented the reverse pattern. In that same ECT group, the current follow-up study examined the effects of clinically effective ECT on both cognitive domains 2 months later. Fifteen ECT patients were administered Hamilton Depression (HAMD-24), Hamilton Anxiety (HAMA), Mini-Mental State Examination Scales and 5 tests of Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery at intake (pre-ECT), end of ECT course (post-ECT), and 2 months thereafter (follow-up). Electroconvulsive therapy was effective in relieving clinical depression. After a post-ECT decline, the patients exhibited significant improvement in both Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, paired associate learning, and Stockings of Cambridge. By contrast, their major pre-ECT deficit in intra/extradimensional set shifting remained virtually unaffected. Our findings suggest that attentional flexibility deficits may constitute a neuropsychological trait-like feature of pharmacoresistant, ECT-referred major depressive disorder patients. However, this deficit does not seem generalized, given patient improvement in episodic visual learning/memory and some indication of improvement in spatial planning after ECT.

Using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) to assess the cognitive impact of electroconvulsive therapy on visual and visuospatial memory.

PubMed

Falconer, D W; Cleland, J; Fielding, S; Reid, I C

2010-06-01

The cognitive impact of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is rarely measured systematically in everyday clinical practice even though patient and clinician acceptance is limited by its adverse affect on memory. If patients are tested it is often with simple paper and pencil tests of visual or verbal memory. There are no reported studies of computerized neuropsychological testing to assess the cognitive impact of ECT on visuospatial memory. Twenty-four patients with severe depression were treated with a course of bilateral ECT and assessed with a battery of visual memory tests within the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). These included spatial and pattern recognition memory, pattern-location associative learning and a delayed matching to sample test. Testing was carried out before ECT, during ECT, within the week after ECT and 1 month after ECT. Patients showed significant impairments in visual and visuospatial memory both during and within the week after ECT. Most impairments resolved 1 month following ECT; however, significant impairment in spatial recognition memory remained. This is one of only a few studies that have detected anterograde memory deficits more than 2 weeks after treatment. Patients receiving ECT displayed a range of visual and visuospatial deficits over the course of their treatment. These deficits were most prominent for tasks dependent on the use of the right medial temporal lobe; frontal lobe function may also be implicated. The CANTAB appears to be a useful instrument for measuring the adverse cognitive effects of ECT on aspects of visual and visuospatial memory.

Cambridge Elementary students enjoy gift of computers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1999-01-01

Children at Cambridge Elementary School, Cocoa, Fla., eagerly unwrap computer equipment donated by Kennedy Space Center. Cambridge is one of 13 Brevard County schools receiving 81 excess contractor computers thanks to an innovative educational outreach project spearheaded by the Nasa k-12 Education Services Office at ksc. Behind the children is Jim Thurston, a school volunteer and retired employee of USBI, who shared in the project. The Astronaut Memorial Foundation, a strategic partner in the effort, and several schools in rural Florida and Georgia also received refurbished computers as part of the year-long project. Ksc employees put in about 3,300 volunteer hours to transform old, excess computers into upgraded, usable units. A total of $90,000 in upgraded computer equipment is being donated.

The Cognitive, Perceptual, and Neural Bases of Skilled Performance

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-09-01

shunting, masking field, bidirectional associative memory, Volterra - Lotka , Gilpin-Ayala, ani Eigen-Schuster models. The Cohen-Grossberg model thus...field, bidirectional associative memory, Volterra - Lotka , Gilpin-Ayala, and Eigen-Schuster models. A Liapunov functional method is described for...storage by neural networks: A general model and global Liapunov method. In E.L. Schwartz (Ed.), Computational neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

The Vanderbilt Expertise Test Reveals Domain-General and Domain-Specific Sex Effects in Object Recognition

PubMed Central

McGugin, Rankin W.; Richler, Jennifer J.; Herzmann, Grit; Speegle, Magen; Gauthier, Isabel

2012-01-01

Individual differences in face recognition are often contrasted with differences in object recognition using a single object category. Likewise, individual differences in perceptual expertise for a given object domain have typically been measured relative to only a single category baseline. In Experiment 1, we present a new test of object recognition, the Vanderbilt Expertise Test (VET), which is comparable in methods to the Cambridge Face Memory Task (CFMT) but uses eight different object categories. Principal component analysis reveals that the underlying structure of the VET can be largely explained by two independent factors, which demonstrate good reliability and capture interesting sex differences inherent in the VET structure. In Experiment 2, we show how the VET can be used to separate domain-specific from domain-general contributions to a standard measure of perceptual expertise. While domain-specific contributions are found for car matching for both men and women and for plane matching in men, women in this sample appear to use more domain-general strategies to match planes. In Experiment 3, we use the VET to demonstrate that holistic processing of faces predicts face recognition independently of general object recognition ability, which has a sex-specific contribution to face recognition. Overall, the results suggest that the VET is a reliable and valid measure of object recognition abilities and can measure both domain-general skills and domain-specific expertise, which were both found to depend on the sex of observers. PMID:22877929

Neurocognitive Functioning in Young Adults with Subclinical Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

PubMed

Blum, Austin W; Redden, Sarah A; Grant, Jon E

2018-03-01

Despite reasonable knowledge of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), little is known of its cognitive antecedents. In this study, we evaluated executive functioning and decision-making in people at risk of developing BDD using neuropsychological tests. Participants were non-treatment seeking volunteers (18-29 years) recruited from the general community, and split into two groups: those "at risk" of developing BDD (N = 5) and controls (N = 82). Participants undertook the One-Touch Stockings of Cambridge, Cambridge Gamble and Spatial Working Memory tasks and were assessed with the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Questionnaire. Results showed that the at-risk subjects performed significantly worse on a measure of executive function, whereas measures of risk-seeking behavior, quality of decision-making, and spatial working memory were largely intact. The findings suggest that selective cognitive dysfunction may already be present in terms of executive functioning in those at risk of developing BDD, even before psychopathology arises.

Does the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB) Distinguish Between Cognitive Domains in Healthy Older Adults?

PubMed

Lenehan, Megan E; Summers, Mathew J; Saunders, Nichole L; Summers, Jeffery J; Vickers, James C

2016-04-01

The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) is a semiautomated computer interface for assessing cognitive function. We examined whether CANTAB tests measured specific cognitive functions, using established neuropsychological tests as a reference point. A sample of 500 healthy older (M = 60.28 years, SD = 6.75) participants in the Tasmanian Healthy Brain Project completed battery of CANTAB subtests and standard paper-based neuropsychological tests. Confirmatory factor analysis identified four factors: processing speed, verbal ability, episodic memory, and working memory. However, CANTAB tests did not consistently load onto the cognitive domain factors derived from traditional measures of the same function. These results indicate that five of the six CANTAB subtests examined did not load onto single cognitive functions. These CANTAB tests may lack the sensitivity to measure discrete cognitive functions in healthy populations or may measure other cognitive domains not included in the traditional neuropsychological battery. © The Author(s) 2015.

Differential performance on tasks of affective processing and decision-making in patients with Panic Disorder and Panic Disorder with comorbid Major Depressive Disorder.

PubMed

Kaplan, Johanna S; Erickson, Kristine; Luckenbaugh, David A; Weiland-Fiedler, Petra; Geraci, Marilla; Sahakian, Barbara J; Charney, Dennis; Drevets, Wayne C; Neumeister, Alexander

2006-10-01

Neuropsychological studies have provided evidence for deficits in psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders. However, neuropsychological function in Panic Disorder (PD) or PD with a comorbid diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has not been comprehensively studied. The present study investigated neuropsychological functioning in patients with PD and PD + MDD by focusing on tasks that assess attention, psychomotor speed, executive function, decision-making, and affective processing. Twenty-two unmedicated patients with PD, eleven of whom had a secondary diagnosis of MDD, were compared to twenty-two healthy controls, matched for gender, age, and intelligence on tasks of attention, memory, psychomotor speed, executive function, decision-making, and affective processing from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), Cambridge Gamble Task, and Affective Go/No-go Task. Relative to matched healthy controls, patients with PD + MDD displayed an attentional bias toward negatively-valenced verbal stimuli (Affective Go/No-go Task) and longer decision-making latencies (Cambridge Gamble Task). Furthermore, the PD + MDD group committed more errors on a task of memory and visual discrimination compared to their controls. In contrast, no group differences were found for PD patients relative to matched control subjects. The sample size was limited, however, all patients were drug-free at the time of testing. The PD + MDD patients demonstrated deficits on a task involving visual discrimination and working memory, and an attentional bias towards negatively-valenced stimuli. In addition, patients with comorbid depression provided qualitatively different responses in the areas of affective and decision-making processes.

Cognitive Training Using a Novel Memory Game on an iPad in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI)

PubMed Central

Savulich, George; Piercy, Thomas; Fox, Chris; Suckling, John; Rowe, James B; O’Brien, John T

2017-01-01

Abstract Background Cognitive training is effective in patients with mild cognitive impairment but does not typically address the motivational deficits associated with older populations with memory difficulties. Methods We conducted a randomized controlled trial of cognitive training using a novel memory game on an iPad in 42 patients with a diagnosis of amnestic mild cognitive impairment assigned to either the cognitive training (n=21; 8 hours of gameplay over 4 weeks) or control (n=21; clinic visits as usual) groups. Results Significant time-by-pattern-by-group interactions were found for cognitive performance in terms of the number of errors made and trials needed on the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Paired Associates Learning task (P=.044; P=.027). Significant time-by-group interactions were also found for the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Paired Associates Learning first trial memory score (P=.002), Mini-Mental State Examination (P=.036), the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (P=.032), and the Apathy Evaluation Scale (P=.026). Within-group comparisons revealed highly specific effects of cognitive training on episodic memory. The cognitive training group maintained high levels of enjoyment and motivation to continue after each hour of gameplay, with self-confidence and self-rated memory ability improving over time. Conclusions Episodic memory robustly improved in the cognitive training group. “Gamified” cognitive training may also enhance visuospatial abilities in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Gamification maximizes engagement with cognitive training by increasing motivation and could complement pharmacological treatments for amnestic mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer’s disease. Larger, more controlled trials are needed to replicate and extend these findings. PMID:28898959

Cognitive Training Using a Novel Memory Game on an iPad in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI).

PubMed

Savulich, George; Piercy, Thomas; Fox, Chris; Suckling, John; Rowe, James B; O'Brien, John T; Sahakian, Barbara J

2017-08-01

Cognitive training is effective in patients with mild cognitive impairment but does not typically address the motivational deficits associated with older populations with memory difficulties. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of cognitive training using a novel memory game on an iPad in 42 patients with a diagnosis of amnestic mild cognitive impairment assigned to either the cognitive training (n=21; 8 hours of gameplay over 4 weeks) or control (n=21; clinic visits as usual) groups. Significant time-by-pattern-by-group interactions were found for cognitive performance in terms of the number of errors made and trials needed on the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Paired Associates Learning task (P=.044; P=.027). Significant time-by-group interactions were also found for the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Paired Associates Learning first trial memory score (P=.002), Mini-Mental State Examination (P=.036), the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (P=.032), and the Apathy Evaluation Scale (P=.026). Within-group comparisons revealed highly specific effects of cognitive training on episodic memory. The cognitive training group maintained high levels of enjoyment and motivation to continue after each hour of gameplay, with self-confidence and self-rated memory ability improving over time. Episodic memory robustly improved in the cognitive training group. "Gamified" cognitive training may also enhance visuospatial abilities in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Gamification maximizes engagement with cognitive training by increasing motivation and could complement pharmacological treatments for amnestic mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease. Larger, more controlled trials are needed to replicate and extend these findings. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CINP.

Maternal depression and trajectories of child internalizing and externalizing problems: the roles of child decision making and working memory.

PubMed

Flouri, E; Ruddy, A; Midouhas, E

2017-04-01

Maternal depression may affect the emotional/behavioural outcomes of children with normal neurocognitive functioning less severely than it does those without. To guide prevention and intervention efforts, research must specify which aspects of a child's cognitive functioning both moderate the effect of maternal depression and are amenable to change. Working memory and decision making may be amenable to change and are so far unexplored as moderators of this effect. Our sample was 17 160 Millennium Cohort Study children. We analysed trajectories of externalizing (conduct and hyperactivity) and internalizing (emotional and peer) problems, measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at the ages 3, 5, 7 and 11 years, using growth curve models. We characterized maternal depression, also time-varying at these ages, by a high score on the K6. Working memory was measured with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Spatial Working Memory Task, and decision making (risk taking and quality of decision making) with the Cambridge Gambling Task, both at age 11 years. Maternal depression predicted both the level and the growth of problems. Risk taking and poor-quality decision making were related positively to externalizing and non-significantly to internalizing problems. Poor working memory was related to both problem types. Neither decision making nor working memory explained the effect of maternal depression on child internalizing/externalizing problems. Importantly, risk taking amplified the effect of maternal depression on internalizing problems, and poor working memory that on internalizing and conduct problems. Impaired decision making and working memory in children amplify the adverse effect of maternal depression on, particularly, internalizing problems.

Evidence for perceptual deficits in associative visual (prosop)agnosia: a single-case study.

PubMed

Delvenne, Jean François; Seron, Xavier; Coyette, Françoise; Rossion, Bruno

2004-01-01

Associative visual agnosia is classically defined as normal visual perception stripped of its meaning [Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 21 (1890) 22/English translation: Cognitive Neuropsychol. 5 (1988) 155]: these patients cannot access to their stored visual memories to categorize the objects nonetheless perceived correctly. However, according to an influential theory of visual agnosia [Farah, Visual Agnosia: Disorders of Object Recognition and What They Tell Us about Normal Vision, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990], visual associative agnosics necessarily present perceptual deficits that are the cause of their impairment at object recognition Here we report a detailed investigation of a patient with bilateral occipito-temporal lesions strongly impaired at object and face recognition. NS presents normal drawing copy, and normal performance at object and face matching tasks as used in classical neuropsychological tests. However, when tested with several computer tasks using carefully controlled visual stimuli and taking both his accuracy rate and response times into account, NS was found to have abnormal performances at high-level visual processing of objects and faces. Albeit presenting a different pattern of deficits than previously described in integrative agnosic patients such as HJA and LH, his deficits were characterized by an inability to integrate individual parts into a whole percept, as suggested by his failure at processing structurally impossible three-dimensional (3D) objects, an absence of face inversion effects and an advantage at detecting and matching single parts. Taken together, these observations question the idea of separate visual representations for object/face perception and object/face knowledge derived from investigations of visual associative (prosop)agnosia, and they raise some methodological issues in the analysis of single-case studies of (prosop)agnosic patients.

Cognitive impairment in patients clinically recovered from central nervous system depressant drug overdose.

PubMed

Dassanayake, Tharaka L; Michie, Patricia T; Jones, Alison; Carter, Gregory; Mallard, Trevor; Whyte, Ian

2012-08-01

Central nervous system depressant drugs (CNS-Ds) are known to impair cognitive functions. Overdose of these drugs is common, and most of the hospital-treated patients are discharged within 24 to 48 hours. No previous studies have examined whether they have residual impairment at the time of discharge. Our aim was to evaluate whether patients with CNS-D overdose are impaired in cognitive domains important in daily activities at that time. We compared visuomotor skills (Trail-Making Test A and Choice Reaction Time), executive functions (viz attentional set-shifting: Trail-Making Test B; and planning: Stockings of Cambridge Task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery), working memory (Letter-Number Sequencing), and impulsivity and decision making (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Information Sampling) in 107 patients with CNS-D overdose (benzodiazepines, opioids, or antipsychotics) with a control group of 68 with non-CNS-D overdose (acetaminophen, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and serotonin noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors) on discharge from hospital. Outcome measures were adjusted for demographic and clinical covariates in multivariate regression models. Compared with the controls, patients in the CNS-D group were significantly impaired in all domains: they had prolonged Trail-Making completion times and reaction times, poorer working memory and planning and were more impulsive in decision making. Their Stockings of Cambridge Task performance was comparable to that of the control group for simple problems but worsened with increasing task complexity. The results show that patients with CNS-D overdose could be impaired in multiple cognitive domains underlying everyday functioning even at the time they are deemed medically fit to be discharged. Such impairments could adversely affect social and professional lives of this relatively young population during the immediate postdischarge period.

The Association between Obesity and Cognitive Function in Otherwise Healthy Premenopausal Arab Women.

PubMed

Farooq, Abdulaziz; Gibson, Ann-Marie; J Reilly, John; Gaoua, Nadia

2018-01-01

To examine the association between obesity and cognitive function in healthy premenopausal women. From a cohort of 220 women, 98 were randomly selected that provided complete data. Body composition was examined by dual-energy X-ray scan. All participants completed the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) to assess cognitive performance in three domains: attention, memory, and planning executive function. The Reaction Time (RTI) test was used to assess motor and mental response speeds; the Stockings of Cambridge (SOC) test was used to assess planning executive function. For memory assessment, the Delayed Match to Sample (DMS), Pattern Recognition Memory (PRM), and Spatial Span (SSP) tests were used to assess forced choice recognition memory, visual pattern recognition memory, and working memory capacity, respectively. 36 (36.7%) were morbidly obese, 22 (22.4%) obese, and 23 (23.5%) overweight. Performance on RTI and SOC planning ability were not associated with body mass index (BMI). DMS mean time to correct response, when stimulus is visible or immediately hidden (0 ms delay), was higher by 785 ± 302 ms (milliseconds) ( p =0.011) and 587 ± 259 ms ( p =0.026) in morbidly obese women compared to normal weight women. Memory span length was significantly lower in overweight (5.5 ± 1.3, p =0.008) and obese women (5.6 ± 1.6, p =0.007) compared to normal weight (6.7 ± 0.9). DEXA-assessed body fat (%) showed similar associations as BMI, and latency to correct response on DMS and PRM was positively correlated with percentage of body fat, but not with VO 2 max. In otherwise healthy premenopausal women, obesity did not impact accuracy on cognitive tasks related to attention, memory, or planning executive function, but morbid obesity was associated with higher latency to correct response on memory-specific tasks and lower memory span length.

Face likeability mediates the memory-enhancing effect of face attractiveness in young but not older adults.

PubMed

Lin, Tian; Lendry, Reesa; Ebner, Natalie C

2016-11-01

Evidence of effects of face attractiveness on memory is mixed and little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. Previous work suggests a possible mediating role of affective responding to faces (i.e., face likeability) on the relationship between face attractiveness and memory. Age-related change in social motivation may reduce the relevance of face attractiveness in older adults, with downstream effects on memory. In the present study, 50 young and 51 older participants were presented with face-trait pairs. Faces varied in attractiveness. Participants then completed a face-trait associative recognition memory task and provided likeability ratings for each face. There was a memory-enhancing effect of face attractiveness in young (but not older) participants, which was partially mediated by face likeability. In addition, more attractive and less attractive (compared to moderately attractive) faces were more likely remembered by both young and older participants. This quadratic effect of face attractiveness on memory was not mediated by face likeability. Findings are discussed in the context of motivational influences on memory that vary with age.

The effect of non-neovascular age-related macular degeneration on face recognition performance.

PubMed

Taylor, Deanna J; Smith, Nicholas D; Binns, Alison M; Crabb, David P

2018-04-01

There is a well-established research base surrounding face recognition in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). However, much of this existing research does not differentiate between results obtained for 'wet' AMD and 'dry' AMD. Here, we test the hypothesis that face recognition performance is worse in patients with dry AMD compared with visually healthy peers. Patients (>60 years of age, logMAR binocular visual acuity 0.7 or better) with dry AMD of varying severity and visually healthy age-related peers (controls) completed a modified version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). Percentage of correctly identified faces was used as an outcome measure for performance for each participant. A 90% normative reference limit was generated from the distribution of CFMT scores recorded in the visually healthy controls. Scores for AMD participants were then specifically compared to this limit, and comparisons between average scores in the AMD severity groups were investigated. Thirty patients (median [interquartile range] age of 76 [70, 79] years) and 34 controls (median age of 70 [64, 75] years) were examined. Four, seventeen and nine patients were classified as having early, intermediate and late AMD (geographic atrophy) respectively. Five (17%) patients recorded a face recognition performance worse than the 90% limit (Fisher's exact test, p = 0.46) set by controls; four of these had geographic atrophy. Patients with geographic atrophy identified fewer faces on average (±SD) (61% ± 22%) than those with early and intermediate AMD (75 ± 11%) and controls (74% ± 11%). People with dry AMD may not suffer from problems with face recognition until the disease is in its later stages; those with late AMD (geographic atrophy) are likely to have difficulty recognising faces. The results from this study should influence the management and expectations of patients with dry AMD in both community practice and hospital clinics.

Who are you looking at? The influence of face gender on visual attention and memory for own- and other-race faces.

PubMed

Lovén, Johanna; Rehnman, Jenny; Wiens, Stefan; Lindholm, Torun; Peira, Nathalie; Herlitz, Agneta

2012-01-01

Previous research suggests that the own-race bias (ORB) in memory for faces is a result of other-race faces receiving less visual attention at encoding. As women typically display an own-gender bias in memory for faces and men do not, we investigated whether face gender and sex of viewer influenced visual attention and memory for own- and other-race faces, and if preferential viewing of own-race faces contributed to the ORB in memory. Participants viewed pairs of female or male own- and other-race faces while their viewing time was recorded. Afterwards, they completed a surprise memory test. We found that (1) other-race males received the initial focus of attention, (2) own-race faces were viewed longer than other-race faces over time, although the difference was larger for female faces, and (3) even though longer viewing time increased the probability of remembering a face, it did not explain the magnified ORB in memory for female faces. Importantly, these findings highlight that face gender moderates attentional responses to and memory for own- and other-race faces.

Construct and concurrent validity of the Cambridge neuropsychological automated tests in Portuguese older adults without neuropsychiatric diagnoses and with Alzheimer's disease dementia.

PubMed

Matos Gonçalves, Marta; Pinho, Maria Salomé; Simões, Mário R

2018-03-01

We aimed to analyze the construct and concurrent validity of the Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP), Paired Associates Learning (PAL), Reaction Time (RTI), and Spatial Working Memory (SWM) tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB®). Inclusion criteria were checked in a first session. The CANTAB and additional pencil-and-paper tests were administered within 1 week. The participants (aged 69-96 years) were 137 Portuguese adults without neuropsychiatric diagnoses and 37 adults with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease dementia. Comparisons were made between the CANTAB tests and between these tests and the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT), Verbal Fluency (VF) test, and some Wechsler Memory Scale-III and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III subtests. Most intra-test correlations were stronger than the CANTAB inter-test correlations. The RVP correlated more with VF animals (.44), the PAL with RCFT immediate recall (-.52), the RTI with RVP mean latency (.42), and the SWM with Spatial Span backward (-.39).

Electrophysiological correlates of forming memories for faces, names, and face-name associations.

PubMed

Guo, Chunyan; Voss, Joel L; Paller, Ken A

2005-02-01

The ability to put a name to a face is a vital aspect of human interaction, but many people find this extremely difficult, especially after being introduced to someone for the first time. Creating enduring associations between arbitrary stimuli in this manner is also a prime example of what patients with amnesia find most difficult. To help develop a better understanding of this type of memory, we sought to obtain measures of the neural events responsible for successfully forming a new face-name association. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) extracted from high-density scalp EEG recordings in order to compare (1) memory for faces, (2) memory for names, and (3) memory for face-name associations. Each visual face appeared simultaneously with a unique spoken name. Signals observed 200-800 ms after the onset of face-name pairs predicted subsequent memory for faces, names, or face-name associations. Difference potentials observed as a function of subsequent memory performance were not identical for these three memory tests, nor were potentials predicting associative memory equivalent to the sum of potentials predicting item memory, suggesting that different neural events at the time of encoding are relevant for these distinct aspects of remembering people.

Contact and other-race effects in configural and component processing of faces.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Ewing, Louise; Hayward, William G; Maurer, Daphne; Mondloch, Catherine J; Tanaka, James W

2009-11-01

Other-race faces are generally recognized more poorly than own-race faces. There has been a long-standing interest in the extent to which differences in contact contribute to this other-race effect (ORE). Here, we examined the effect of contact on two distinct aspects of face memory, memory for configuration and for components, both of which are better for own-race than other-race faces. Configural and component memory were measured using recognition memory tests with intact study faces and blurred (isolates memory for configuration) and scrambled (isolates memory for components) test faces, respectively. Our participants were a large group of ethnically Chinese individuals who had resided in Australia for varying lengths of time, from a few weeks to 26 years. We found that time in a Western country significantly (negatively) predicted the size of the ORE for configural, but not component, memory. There was also a trend for earlier age of arrival to predict smaller OREs in configural, but not component, memory. These results suggest that memory for configural information in other-race faces improves with experience with such faces. However, as found for recognition memory generally, the contact effects were small, indicating that other factors must play a substantial role in cross-race differences in face memory.

The neuropsychological differentiation of patients with very mild Alzheimer's disease and/or major depression.

PubMed

desRosiers, G; Hodges, J R; Berrios, G

1995-11-01

To evaluate the usefulness of standardized neuropsychological tests in the psychometric differentiation of patients with very mild or mild Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and/or major depression presenting in a tertiary clinic with memory/attention complaints. Controlled prospective clinicoexperimental design. Multidisciplinary Memory Clinic at Addenbroke's Hospital, Cambridge, England. Twenty-four patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (12 with major depression and 12 without), 12 patients with major depressive illness but without AD, and 12 healthy control subjects, all matched for age, sex, education levels, and estimates of premorbid intellectual potential. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Wechsler's Logical Memory (WLM) and Visual Reproduction (WVR), immediate and delayed reproduction, Wechsler's paired Associate Learning (WPAL), including the Easy and Hard subsets. Warrington's Recognition Memory for Faces (WRMF), Kendrick's Object Learning (KOLT) and Digit Copying (KDCT) Tests. Minimum 2-year follow-up diagnosis. Statistically, patients with very mild AD were distinguished clearly from those without AD on most tests of memory functions. Psychometrically, only KOLT and an index of retention on WLM and WVR were specific enough to avoid false positives, a requirement for second-stage tools. They also proved sensitive enough to suggest their role as first-stage instruments when screening for primary dementia in high-functioning patients scoring above the cut-point on MMSE. As efforts intensify to develop more powerful means to identify patients with Alzheimer's disease in its earliest stages, inclusion of specialist tests posing greater cognitive challenge than standard mental status scales has been one strategy. Our study explored how some of these neuropsychological tools behave psychometrically when analyzed on a single-case basis, and the results suggest a few are sensitive enough to boost detection above base rates alone while also being specific enough to reduce false alarms. Retention on Wechsler's Logical Memory and Visual Reproduction tasks and scores on Kendrick's Object Learning Test helped decrease the degree of ambiguity when cognitive profiles were used to distinguish depressed patients with Alzheimer disease from those without.

Memory for faces: the effect of facial appearance and the context in which the face is encountered.

PubMed

Mattarozzi, Katia; Todorov, Alexander; Codispoti, Maurizio

2015-03-01

We investigated the effects of appearance of emotionally neutral faces and the context in which the faces are encountered on incidental face memory. To approximate real-life situations as closely as possible, faces were embedded in a newspaper article, with a headline that specified an action performed by the person pictured. We found that facial appearance affected memory so that faces perceived as trustworthy or untrustworthy were remembered better than neutral ones. Furthermore, the memory of untrustworthy faces was slightly better than that of trustworthy faces. The emotional context of encoding affected the details of face memory. Faces encountered in a neutral context were more likely to be recognized as only familiar. In contrast, emotionally relevant contexts of encoding, whether pleasant or unpleasant, increased the likelihood of remembering semantic and even episodic details associated with faces. These findings suggest that facial appearance (i.e., perceived trustworthiness) affects face memory. Moreover, the findings support prior evidence that the engagement of emotion processing during memory encoding increases the likelihood that events are not only recognized but also remembered.

Neuropsychological and hypothalamic-pituitary-axis function in female patients with melancholic and non-melancholic depression.

PubMed

Michopoulos, Ioannis; Zervas, Iannis M; Pantelis, Chris; Tsaltas, Eleftheria; Papakosta, Vassiliki-Maria; Boufidou, Fotini; Nikolaou, Chrissoula; Papageorgiou, Charalambos; Soldatos, Costas R; Lykouras, Lefteris

2008-06-01

Executive function deficits in depression implicate involvement of frontal-striatal circuits. However, studies of hypothalamic-pituitary-axis (HPA) function suggest that stress-related brain changes of hippocampus may also implicate prefrontal-hippocampal circuits, which may explain the profile of both executive dysfunction and memory deficits. In this study we examined the performance of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) on tasks of memory and executive function in relation to melancholic features and to cortisol levels. Our hypothesis was that raised cortisol levels in melancholic patients would correlate with these deficits. Forty female MDD patients, 20 having melancholic features (MEL vs. Non-MEL), and 20 sex-age- and education-matched normal controls were investigated using the Cambridge neuropsychological test automated battery (CANTAB), to assess memory (paired associative learning, PAL; short-term recognition memory, SRM) and executive (intradimensional/extradimensional set-shifting, ID/ED; Stockings of Cambridge, SOC) functions. Plasma and salivary cortisol levels were measured. The MDD patients performed worse than controls on PAL and both executive tasks. The MEL group differed from controls on all tests, and differed from the non-MEL only at the ED stage of the ID/ED task. Patient cortisol levels were within the normal range and did not correlate with neuropsychological performance for any group. MDD patients showed neuropsychological deficits on tasks of executive function and memory, supporting the model of frontal-temporal dysfunction. MEL vs. non-MEL performed worse overall and demonstrated a qualitative difference in set shifting, perhaps implicating more extensive prefrontal involvement. Cortisol levels did not correlate with depression severity or the observed deficits.

Schemas in Problem Solving: An Integrated Model of Learning, Memory, and Instruction

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-01-01

article: "Hybrid Computation in Cognitive Science: Neural Networks and Symbols" (J. A. Anderson, 1990). And, Marvin Minsky echoes the sentiment in his...distributed processing: A handbook of models, programs, and exercises. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Minsky , M. (1991). Logical versus analogical or symbolic

Theoretical Studies in Natural Language Understanding.

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-05-01

Contract Expiration Date: 1 May 1977 30 April 1981 Short Title of Work: Scientific Officer: Language Understanding Marvin Denicoff [ Report No. 4395 Bolt...Cambridge, MA 02138, October (more extensive than the Quillian 1968 paper by the same name). Quillian, M.R. 1968. "Semantic Memory," in M. Minsky (ed

Cognitive Profile of Children and Adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa

PubMed Central

Kjaersdam Telléus, Gry; Jepsen, Jens Richardt; Bentz, Mette; Christiansen, Eva; Jensen, Signe O W; Fagerlund, Birgitte; Thomsen, Per Hove

2015-01-01

Objective Few studies of cognitive functioning in children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) have been conducted. The aim of this study was to examine the neurocognitive and intelligence profile of this clinical group. Method The study was a matched case–control (N = 188), multi-centre study including children and adolescents with AN (N = 94) and healthy control participants (N = 94). Results The results suggest that Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III/Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III) in this patient group is close to the normal population mean of 100. Individuals with AN exhibited significantly worse performance in nonverbal intelligence functions (i.e. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III/Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III, Perceptual Organization Index) and in verbal memory (Test of Memory and Learning—Second Edition, Memory for Stories) and motor speed (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, Simple and Choice Reaction Time) compared with healthy control participants. No significant difference in set-shifting ability (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift and Trail Making Test B) was found. Conclusions Inefficiency in nonverbal intelligence functions and in specific cognitive functions was found in this study of children and adolescents with AN. © 2014 The Authors. European Eating Disorders Review published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. PMID:25504443

Cognitive profile of children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa.

PubMed

Kjaersdam Telléus, Gry; Jepsen, Jens Richardt; Bentz, Mette; Christiansen, Eva; Jensen, Signe O W; Fagerlund, Birgitte; Thomsen, Per Hove

2015-01-01

Few studies of cognitive functioning in children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) have been conducted. The aim of this study was to examine the neurocognitive and intelligence profile of this clinical group. The study was a matched case-control (N = 188), multi-centre study including children and adolescents with AN (N = 94) and healthy control participants (N = 94). The results suggest that Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III/Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III) in this patient group is close to the normal population mean of 100. Individuals with AN exhibited significantly worse performance in nonverbal intelligence functions (i.e. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III/Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III, Perceptual Organization Index) and in verbal memory (Test of Memory and Learning-Second Edition, Memory for Stories) and motor speed (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, Simple and Choice Reaction Time) compared with healthy control participants. No significant difference in set-shifting ability (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift and Trail Making Test B) was found. Inefficiency in nonverbal intelligence functions and in specific cognitive functions was found in this study of children and adolescents with AN. © 2014 The Authors. European Eating Disorders Review published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Remembering faces and scenes: The mixed-category advantage in visual working memory.

PubMed

Jiang, Yuhong V; Remington, Roger W; Asaad, Anthony; Lee, Hyejin J; Mikkalson, Taylor C

2016-09-01

We examined the mixed-category memory advantage for faces and scenes to determine how domain-specific cortical resources constrain visual working memory. Consistent with previous findings, visual working memory for a display of 2 faces and 2 scenes was better than that for a display of 4 faces or 4 scenes. This pattern was unaffected by manipulations of encoding duration. However, the mixed-category advantage was carried solely by faces: Memory for scenes was not better when scenes were encoded with faces rather than with other scenes. The asymmetry between faces and scenes was found when items were presented simultaneously or sequentially, centrally, or peripherally, and when scenes were drawn from a narrow category. A further experiment showed a mixed-category advantage in memory for faces and bodies, but not in memory for scenes and objects. The results suggest that unique category-specific interactions contribute significantly to the mixed-category advantage in visual working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Recognition Memory for Realistic Synthetic Faces

PubMed Central

Yotsumoto, Yuko; Kahana, Michael J.; Wilson, Hugh R.; Sekuler, Robert

2006-01-01

A series of experiments examined short-term recognition memory for trios of briefly-presented, synthetic human faces derived from three real human faces. The stimuli were graded series of faces, which differed by varying known amounts from the face of the average female. Faces based on each of the three real faces were transformed so as to lie along orthogonal axes in a 3-D face space. Experiment 1 showed that the synthetic faces' perceptual similarity stucture strongly influenced recognition memory. Results were fit by NEMo, a noisy exemplar model of perceptual recognition memory. The fits revealed that recognition memory was influenced both by the similarity of the probe to series items, and by the similarities among the series items themselves. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) showed that faces' perceptual representations largely preserved the 3-D space in which the face stimuli were arrayed. NEMo gave a better account of the results when similarity was defined as perceptual, MDS similarity rather than physical proximity of one face to another. Experiment 2 confirmed the importance of within-list homogeneity directly, without mediation of a model. We discuss the affinities and differences between visual memory for synthetic faces and memory for simpler stimuli. PMID:17948069

Selective attention supports working memory maintenance by modulating perceptual processing of distractors.

PubMed

Sreenivasan, Kartik K; Jha, Amishi P

2007-01-01

Selective attention has been shown to bias sensory processing in favor of relevant stimuli and against irrelevant or distracting stimuli in perceptual tasks. Increasing evidence suggests that selective attention plays an important role during working memory maintenance, possibly by biasing sensory processing in favor of to-be-remembered items. In the current study, we investigated whether selective attention may also support working memory by biasing processing against irrelevant and potentially distracting information. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects (n = 22) performed a delayed-recognition task for faces and shoes. The delay period was filled with face or shoe distractors. Behavioral performance was impaired when distractors were congruent with the working memory domain (e.g., face distractor during working memory for faces) relative to when distractors were incongruent with the working memory domain (e.g., face distractor during shoe working memory). If attentional biasing against distractor processing is indeed functionally relevant in supporting working memory maintenance, perceptual processing of distractors is predicted to be attenuated when distractors are more behaviorally intrusive relative to when they are nonintrusive. As such, we predicted that perceptual processing of distracting faces, as measured by the face-sensitive N170 ERP component, would be reduced in the context of congruent (face) working memory relative to incongruent (shoe) working memory. The N170 elicited by distracting faces demonstrated reduced amplitude during congruent versus incongruent working memory. These results suggest that perceptual processing of distracting faces may be attenuated due to attentional biasing against sensory processing of distractors that are most behaviorally intrusive during working memory maintenance.

The Focus of Spatial Attention Determines the Number and Precision of Face Representations in Working Memory.

PubMed

Towler, John; Kelly, Maria; Eimer, Martin

2016-06-01

The capacity of visual working memory for faces is extremely limited, but the reasons for these limitations remain unknown. We employed event-related brain potential measures to demonstrate that individual faces have to be focally attended in order to be maintained in working memory, and that attention is allocated to only a single face at a time. When 2 faces have to be memorized simultaneously in a face identity-matching task, the focus of spatial attention during encoding predicts which of these faces can be successfully maintained in working memory and matched to a subsequent test face. We also show that memory representations of attended faces are maintained in a position-dependent fashion. These findings demonstrate that the limited capacity of face memory is directly linked to capacity limits of spatial attention during the encoding and maintenance of individual face representations. We suggest that the capacity and distribution of selective spatial attention is a dynamic resource that constrains the capacity and fidelity of working memory for faces. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Face-memory and emotion: associations with major depression in children and adolescents.

PubMed

Pine, Daniel S; Lissek, Shmuel; Klein, Rachel G; Mannuzza, Salvatore; Moulton, John L; Guardino, Mary; Woldehawariat, Girma

2004-10-01

Studies in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) document abnormalities in both memory and face-emotion processing. The current study used a novel face-memory task to test the hypothesis that adolescent MDD is associated with a deficit in memory for face-emotions. The study also examines the relationship between parental MDD and memory performance in offspring. Subjects were 152 offspring (ages 9-19) of adults with either MDD, anxiety disorders, both MDD and anxiety, or no disorder. Parents and offspring were assessed for mental disorders. Collection of face-memory data was blind to offspring and parent diagnosis. A computerized task was developed that required rating of facial photographs depicting 'happy,"fearful,' or 'angry' emotions followed by a memory recall test. Recall accuracy was examined as a function of face-emotion type. Age and gender independently predicted memory, with better recall in older and female subjects. Controlling for age and gender, offspring with a history of MDD (n = 19) demonstrated significant deficits in memory selectively for fearful faces, but not happy or angry faces. Parental MDD was not associated with face-memory accuracy. This study found an association between MDD in childhood or adolescence and perturbed encoding of fearful faces. MDD in young individuals may predispose to subtle anomalies in a neural circuit encompassing the amygdala, a brain region implicated in the processing of fearful facial expressions. These findings suggest that brain imaging studies using similar face-emotion paradigms should test whether deficits in processing of fearful faces relate to amygdala dysfunction in children and adolescents with MDD.

Neural Correlates of the In-Group Memory Advantage on the Encoding and Recognition of Faces

PubMed Central

Herzmann, Grit; Curran, Tim

2013-01-01

People have a memory advantage for faces that belong to the same group, for example, that attend the same university or have the same personality type. Faces from such in-group members are assumed to receive more attention during memory encoding and are therefore recognized more accurately. Here we use event-related potentials related to memory encoding and retrieval to investigate the neural correlates of the in-group memory advantage. Using the minimal group procedure, subjects were classified based on a bogus personality test as belonging to one of two personality types. While the electroencephalogram was recorded, subjects studied and recognized faces supposedly belonging to the subject’s own and the other personality type. Subjects recognized in-group faces more accurately than out-group faces but the effect size was small. Using the individual behavioral in-group memory advantage in multivariate analyses of covariance, we determined neural correlates of the in-group advantage. During memory encoding (300 to 1000 ms after stimulus onset), subjects with a high in-group memory advantage elicited more positive amplitudes for subsequently remembered in-group than out-group faces, showing that in-group faces received more attention and elicited more neural activity during initial encoding. Early during memory retrieval (300 to 500 ms), frontal brain areas were more activated for remembered in-group faces indicating an early detection of group membership. Surprisingly, the parietal old/new effect (600 to 900 ms) thought to indicate recollection processes differed between in-group and out-group faces independent from the behavioral in-group memory advantage. This finding suggests that group membership affects memory retrieval independent of memory performance. Comparisons with a previous study on the other-race effect, another memory phenomenon influenced by social classification of faces, suggested that the in-group memory advantage is dominated by top-down processing whereas the other-race effect is also influenced by extensive perceptual experience. PMID:24358226

Practically perfect: learning by doing at AVS congress.

PubMed

2017-02-18

It has been some time since Cambridge vet school last hosted the annual AVS congress, which meant that this year's congress committee faced a steep learning curve. However, as Gill Harris reports, it rose to the occasion. British Veterinary Association.

An Activation/Inhibition Network Cell.

DTIC Science & Technology

1982-01-01

memory is a powerful concept, no one has found a way of doing activation and inhibition on it, so I’ll stick to the simple mapping. --------- AAB -W...Rumongus Scale Integration.. G-9- Vorking Paper 31 Referens. Fahiman, S.. NL: A s=u LI= rpnng A" using rial-world kowledge . MIT Pess, Cambridge, 1979

Schemas in Problem Solving: An Integrated Model of Learning, Memory, and Instruction

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-01-01

reflected in the title of a recent article: "lybid Coupation, in Cognitive Science: Neural Networks ad Symbl (3. A Andesson, 1990). And, Marvin Mtuky...Rumneihart, D. E (1989). Explorations in parallel distributed processing: A handbook of models, programs, and exercises. Cambridge, MA: The MrT Press. Minsky

Emotion and Destination Memory in Alzheimer's Disease.

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Raffard, Stephane; Antoine, Pascal; Gely-Nargeot, Marie-Christine

2015-01-01

Research shows beneficial effect of emotion on self-related information in patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Our paper investigates whether emotion improves destination memory (e.g., did I tell you about the manuscript?), which is thought to be self-related (e.g., did I tell you about the manuscript?). To this aim, twenty-seven AD patients and thirty healthy older adults told 24 neutral facts to eight neutral faces, eight positive faces, and eight negative faces. On a subsequent recognition task, participants had to decide whether they had previously told a given fact to a given face or not. Data revealed no emotional effect on destination memory in AD patients. However, in healthy older adults, better destination memory was observed for negative faces than for positive faces, and the latter memory was better than for neutral faces. The absence of emotional effect on destination memory in AD is interpreted in terms of substantial decline in this memory in the disease.

Model-Driven Study of Visual Memory

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-12-01

dimensional stimuli (synthetic human faces ) afford important insights into episodic recognition memory. The results were well accommodated by a summed...the unusual properties of the z-transformed ROCS. 15. SUBJECT TERMS Memory, visual memory, computational model, human memory, faces , identity 16...3 Accomplishments/New Findings 3 Work on Objective One: Recognition Memory for Synthetic Faces . 3 Experim ent 1

The effects of distinctiveness on memory and metamemory for face-name associations.

PubMed

Watier, Nicholas; Collin, Charles

2012-01-01

We examined the influence of face and name distinctiveness on memory and metamemory for face-name associations. Four types of monitoring judgements were solicited during encoding and retrieval of face-name pairs that contained distinct or typical faces (Experiment 1) or names (Experiment 2). The beneficial effects of distinctiveness on associative memory were symmetrical between faces and names, such that relative to their typical counterparts, distinct faces enhanced memory for names, and distinct names enhanced memory for faces. These effects were also apparent in metamemory. Estimates of prospective and retrospective memory performance were greater for face-name associations that contained a distinct face or name compared with a typical face or name, regardless of whether the distinct item was a cue or target. Moreover, the predictive validity of prospective monitoring improved with name distinctiveness, whereas the predictive validity of retrospective monitoring improved with facial distinctiveness. Our results indicate that distinctiveness affects not only the strength of the association between a face and a name, but also the ability to monitor that association.

Why it's easier to remember seeing a face we already know than one we don't: preexisting memory representations facilitate memory formation.

PubMed

Reder, Lynne M; Victoria, Lindsay W; Manelis, Anna; Oates, Joyce M; Dutcher, Janine M; Bates, Jordan T; Cook, Shaun; Aizenstein, Howard J; Quinlan, Joseph; Gyulai, Ferenc

2013-03-01

In two experiments, we provided support for the hypothesis that stimuli with preexisting memory representations (e.g., famous faces) are easier to associate to their encoding context than are stimuli that lack long-term memory representations (e.g., unknown faces). Subjects viewed faces superimposed on different backgrounds (e.g., the Eiffel Tower). Face recognition on a surprise memory test was better when the encoding background was reinstated than when it was swapped with a different background; however, the reinstatement advantage was modulated by how many faces had been seen with a given background, and reinstatement did not improve recognition for unknown faces. The follow-up experiment added a drug intervention that inhibited the ability to form new associations. Context reinstatement did not improve recognition for famous or unknown faces under the influence of the drug. The results suggest that it is easier to associate context to faces that have a preexisting long-term memory representation than to faces that do not.

Age Invariance in Semantic and Episodic Metamemory: Both Younger and Older Adults Provide Accurate Feeling of Knowing For Names of Faces

PubMed Central

Eakin, Deborah K.; Hertzog, Christopher; Harris, William

2013-01-01

Age differences in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) accuracy were examined for both episodic memory and semantic memory. Younger and older adults either viewed pictures of famous faces (semantic memory) or associated nonfamous faces and names (episodic memory) and were tested on their memory for the name of the presented face. Participants viewed the faces again and made a FOK prediction about future recognition of the name associated with the presented face. Finally, four-alternative forced-choice recognition memory for the name, cued by the face, was tested and confidence judgments (CJs) were collected for each recognition response. Age differences were not obtained in semantic memory or the resolution of semantic FOKs, defined by within-person correlations of FOKs with recognition memory performance. Although age differences were obtained in level of episodic memory, there were no age differences in the resolution of episodic FOKs. FOKs for correctly recognized items correlated reliably with CJs for both types of materials, and did not differ by age group. The results indicate age invariance in monitoring of retrieval processes for name-face associations. PMID:23537379

Age invariance in semantic and episodic metamemory: both younger and older adults provide accurate feeling-of-knowing for names of faces.

PubMed

Eakin, Deborah K; Hertzog, Christopher; Harris, William

2014-01-01

Age differences in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) accuracy were examined for both episodic memory and semantic memory. Younger and older adults either viewed pictures of famous faces (semantic memory) or associated non-famous faces and names (episodic memory) and were tested on their memory for the name of the presented face. Participants viewed the faces again and made a FOK prediction about future recognition of the name associated with the presented face. Finally, four-alternative forced-choice recognition memory for the name, cued by the face, was tested and confidence judgments (CJs) were collected for each recognition response. Age differences were not obtained in semantic memory or the resolution of semantic FOKs, defined by within-person correlations of FOKs with recognition memory performance. Although age differences were obtained in level of episodic memory, there were no age differences in the resolution of episodic FOKs. FOKs for correctly recognized items correlated reliably with CJs for both types of materials, and did not differ by age group. The results indicate age invariance in monitoring of retrieval processes for name-face associations.

Valence modulates source memory for faces.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel

2010-01-01

Previous studies in which the effects of emotional valence on old-new discrimination and source memory have been examined have yielded highly inconsistent results. Here, we present two experiments showing that old-new face discrimination was not affected by whether a face was associated with disgusting, pleasant, or neutral behavior. In contrast, source memory for faces associated with disgusting behavior (i.e., memory for the disgusting context in which the face was encountered) was consistently better than source memory for other types of faces. This data pattern replicates the findings of studies in which descriptions of cheating, neutral, and trustworthy behavior were used, which findings were previously ascribed to a highly specific cheater detection module. The present results suggest that the enhanced source memory for faces of cheaters is due to a more general source memory advantage for faces associated with negative or threatening contexts that may be instrumental in avoiding the negative consequences of encounters with persons associated with negative or threatening behaviors.

Non-invasive brain stimulation targeting the right fusiform gyrus selectively increases working memory for faces.

PubMed

Brunyé, Tad T; Moran, Joseph M; Holmes, Amanda; Mahoney, Caroline R; Taylor, Holly A

2017-04-01

The human extrastriate cortex contains a region critically involved in face detection and memory, the right fusiform gyrus. The present study evaluated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting this anatomical region would selectively influence memory for faces versus non-face objects (houses). Anodal tDCS targeted the right fusiform gyrus (Brodmann's Area 37), with the anode at electrode site PO10, and cathode at FP2. Two stimulation conditions were compared in a repeated-measures design: 0.5mA versus 1.5mA intensity; a separate control group received no stimulation. Participants completed a working memory task for face and house stimuli, varying in memory load from 1 to 4 items. Individual differences measures assessed trait-based differences in facial recognition skills. Results showed 1.5mA intensity stimulation (versus 0.5mA and control) increased performance at high memory loads, but only with faces. Lower overall working memory capacity predicted a positive impact of tDCS. Results provide support for the notion of functional specialization of the right fusiform regions for maintaining face (but not non-face object) stimuli in working memory, and further suggest that low intensity electrical stimulation of this region may enhance demanding face working memory performance particularly in those with relatively poor baseline working memory skills. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Review Essay: Pondering Pedagogical Paradoxes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spencer, Leland G.

2015-01-01

Herein, Leland Spencer provides a review of four book selections while reflecting on paradoxes regularly faced by feminist teachers (and scholars, activists, and thinkers). The books include: (1) Bradley, Harriet. "Gender." Cambridge: Polity, 2012. Print; (2) Murphy, Michael J., and Elizabeth N. Ribarsky, eds. "Activities for…

Face-Memory and Emotion: Associations with Major Depression in Children and Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pine, Daniel S.; Lissek, Shmuel; Klein, Rachel G.; Mannuzza, Salvatore; Moulton, John L., III; Guardino, Mary; Woldehawariat, Girma

2004-01-01

Background: Studies in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) document abnormalities in both memory and face-emotion processing. The current study used a novel face-memory task to test the hypothesis that adolescent MDD is associated with a deficit in memory for face-emotions. The study also examines the relationship between parental MDD and…

Expertise for upright faces improves the precision but not the capacity of visual working memory.

PubMed

Lorenc, Elizabeth S; Pratte, Michael S; Angeloni, Christopher F; Tong, Frank

2014-10-01

Considerable research has focused on how basic visual features are maintained in working memory, but little is currently known about the precision or capacity of visual working memory for complex objects. How precisely can an object be remembered, and to what extent might familiarity or perceptual expertise contribute to working memory performance? To address these questions, we developed a set of computer-generated face stimuli that varied continuously along the dimensions of age and gender, and we probed participants' memories using a method-of-adjustment reporting procedure. This paradigm allowed us to separately estimate the precision and capacity of working memory for individual faces, on the basis of the assumptions of a discrete capacity model, and to assess the impact of face inversion on memory performance. We found that observers could maintain up to four to five items on average, with equally good memory capacity for upright and upside-down faces. In contrast, memory precision was significantly impaired by face inversion at every set size tested. Our results demonstrate that the precision of visual working memory for a complex stimulus is not strictly fixed but, instead, can be modified by learning and experience. We find that perceptual expertise for upright faces leads to significant improvements in visual precision, without modifying the capacity of working memory.

Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories.

PubMed

Belfi, Amy M; Karlan, Brett; Tranel, Daniel

2016-08-01

Music is strongly intertwined with memories-for example, hearing a song from the past can transport you back in time, triggering the sights, sounds, and feelings of a specific event. This association between music and vivid autobiographical memory is intuitively apparent, but the idea that music is intimately tied with memories, seemingly more so than other potent memory cues (e.g., familiar faces), has not been empirically tested. Here, we compared memories evoked by music to those evoked by famous faces, predicting that music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) would be more vivid. Participants listened to 30 songs, viewed 30 faces, and reported on memories that were evoked. Memories were transcribed and coded for vividness as in Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch, M. [2002. Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677-689]. In support of our hypothesis, MEAMs were more vivid than autobiographical memories evoked by faces. MEAMs contained a greater proportion of internal details and a greater number of perceptual details, while face-evoked memories contained a greater number of external details. Additionally, we identified sex differences in memory vividness: for both stimulus categories, women retrieved more vivid memories than men. The results show that music not only effectively evokes autobiographical memories, but that these memories are more vivid than those evoked by famous faces.

Neural Dynamics Associated with Semantic and Episodic Memory for Faces: Evidence from Multiple Frequency Bands

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zion-Golumbic, Elana; Kutas, Marta; Bentin, Shlomo

2010-01-01

Prior semantic knowledge facilitates episodic recognition memory for faces. To examine the neural manifestation of the interplay between semantic and episodic memory, we investigated neuroelectric dynamics during the creation (study) and the retrieval (test) of episodic memories for famous and nonfamous faces. Episodic memory effects were evident…

KSC-99pp1228

NASA Image and Video Library

1999-10-06

Children at Cambridge Elementary School, Cocoa, Fla., eagerly unwrap computer equipment donated by Kennedy Space Center. Cambridge is one of 13 Brevard County schools receiving 81 excess contractor computers thanks to an innovative educational outreach project spearheaded by the Nasa k-12 Education Services Office at ksc. Behind the children is Jim Thurston, a school volunteer and retired employee of USBI, who shared in the project. The Astronaut Memorial Foundation, a strategic partner in the effort, and several schools in rural Florida and Georgia also received refurbished computers as part of the year-long project. KSC employees put in about 3,300 volunteer hours to transform old, excess computers into upgraded, usable units. A total of $90,000 in upgraded computer equipment is being donated

Recognition of face and non-face stimuli in autistic spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Arkush, Leo; Smith-Collins, Adam P R; Fiorentini, Chiara; Skuse, David H

2013-12-01

The ability to remember faces is critical for the development of social competence. From childhood to adulthood, we acquire a high level of expertise in the recognition of facial images, and neural processes become dedicated to sustaining competence. Many people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poor face recognition memory; changes in hairstyle or other non-facial features in an otherwise familiar person affect their recollection skills. The observation implies that they may not use the configuration of the inner face to achieve memory competence, but bolster performance in other ways. We aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of a group of high-functioning unmedicated adolescents with ASD and a matched control group on a "surprise" face recognition memory task. We compared their memory for unfamiliar faces with their memory for images of houses. To evaluate the role that is played by peripheral cues in assisting recognition memory, we cropped both sets of pictures, retaining only the most salient central features. ASD adolescents had poorer recognition memory for faces than typical controls, but their recognition memory for houses was unimpaired. Cropping images of faces did not disproportionately influence their recall accuracy, relative to controls. House recognition skills (cropped and uncropped) were similar in both groups. In the ASD group only, performance on both sets of task was closely correlated, implying that memory for faces and other complex pictorial stimuli is achieved by domain-general (non-dedicated) cognitive mechanisms. Adolescents with ASD apparently do not use domain-specialized processing of inner facial cues to support face recognition memory. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Large Capacity of Conscious Access for Incidental Memories in Natural Scenes.

PubMed

Kaunitz, Lisandro N; Rowe, Elise G; Tsuchiya, Naotsugu

2016-09-01

When searching a crowd, people can detect a target face only by direct fixation and attention. Once the target is found, it is consciously experienced and remembered, but what is the perceptual fate of the fixated nontarget faces? Whereas introspection suggests that one may remember nontargets, previous studies have proposed that almost no memory should be retained. Using a gaze-contingent paradigm, we asked subjects to visually search for a target face within a crowded natural scene and then tested their memory for nontarget faces, as well as their confidence in those memories. Subjects remembered up to seven fixated, nontarget faces with more than 70% accuracy. Memory accuracy was correlated with trial-by-trial confidence ratings, which implies that the memory was consciously maintained and accessed. When the search scene was inverted, no more than three nontarget faces were remembered. These findings imply that incidental memory for faces, such as those recalled by eyewitnesses, is more reliable than is usually assumed. © The Author(s) 2016.

The effect of age on memory for emotional faces.

PubMed

Grady, Cheryl L; Hongwanishkul, Donaya; Keightley, Michelle; Lee, Wendy; Hasher, Lynn

2007-05-01

Prior studies of emotion suggest that young adults should have enhanced memory for negative faces and that this enhancement should be reduced in older adults. Several studies have not shown these effects but were conducted with procedures different from those used with other emotional stimuli. In this study, researchers examined age differences in recognition of faces with emotional or neutral expressions, using trial-unique stimuli, as is typically done with other types of emotional stimuli. They also assessed the influence of personality traits and mood on memory. Enhanced recognition for negative faces was found in young adults but not in older adults. Recognition of faces was not influenced by mood or personality traits in young adults, but lower levels of extraversion and better emotional sensitivity predicted better negative face memory in older adults. These results suggest that negative expressions enhance memory for faces in young adults, as negative valence enhances memory for words and scenes. This enhancement is absent in older adults, but memory for emotional faces is modulated in older adults by personality traits that are relevant to emotional processing. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved

Hot and cold cognition in unmedicated depressed subjects with bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Roiser, Jonathan P; Cannon, Dara M; Gandhi, Shilpa K; Taylor Tavares, Joana; Erickson, Kristine; Wood, Suzanne; Klaver, Jacqueline M; Clark, Luke; Zarate, Carlos A; Sahakian, Barbara J; Drevets, Wayne C

2009-03-01

Neuropsychological studies in subjects with bipolar disorder (BD) have reported deficits on a variety of cognitive measures. However, because the majority of subjects were medicated at the time of testing in previous studies, it is currently unclear whether the pattern of deficits reported is related to BD itself or to psychotropic medication. We addressed this issue by examining cognitive performance in a group of unmedicated, currently depressed subjects with BD. Forty-nine unmedicated subjects who met DSM-IV criteria for BD, depressed phase, and 55 control subjects participated in this study. Most patients were diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. Performance on emotion-dependent, or 'hot', and emotion-independent, or 'cold', cognitive tasks was assessed using tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. The groups were well matched with respect to general intelligence and demographic variables. Deficits in the unmedicated depressed BD group were apparent on tests tapping 'hot' cognitive processing, for example the Cambridge Gamble task and the Probabilistic Reversal Learning task. However, other than a deficit on the Spatial Span test in the depressed BD subjects, the groups performed equivalently on most measures of 'cold' cognitive processing, for example visual memory, attention, and working memory. These data suggest that deficits on tests involving reward processing, short-term spatial memory storage, and sensitivity to negative feedback in depressed BD subjects represent an effect of the illness itself and not mood-stabilizing medication.

Not So Black and White: Memory for Ambiguous Group Members

PubMed Central

Pauker, Kristin; Weisbuch, Max; Ambady, Nalini; Sommers, Samuel R; Ivcevic, Zorana; Adams, Reginald B

2013-01-01

Exponential increases in multi-racial identities expected over the next century, creates a conundrum for perceivers accustomed to classifying people as “own” or “other” race. The current research examines how perceivers resolve this dilemma with regard to the “own-race bias.” We hypothesized that perceivers would not be motivated to include ambiguous-race individuals in the in-group and would therefore have some difficulty remembering them. Both racially-ambiguous and other-race faces were misremembered more often than own-race faces (Study 1), though memory for ambiguous faces was improved among perceivers motivated to include biracial individuals in the in-group (Study 2). Racial labels assigned to racially ambiguous faces determined memory for these faces, suggesting that uncertainty provides the motivational context for discounting ambiguous faces in memory (Study 3). Finally, an inclusion motivation fostered cognitive associations between racially-ambiguous faces and the in-group. Moreover, the extent to which perceivers associated racially-ambiguous faces with the in-group predicted memory for ambiguous faces and accounted for the impact of motivation on memory (Study 4). Thus, memory for biracial individuals seems to involve a flexible person construal process shaped by motivational factors. PMID:19309203

Behavioural and magnetoencephalographic evidence for the interaction between semantic and episodic memory in healthy elderly subjects.

PubMed

La Corte, Valentina; Dalla Barba, Gianfranco; Lemaréchal, Jean-Didier; Garnero, Line; George, Nathalie

2012-10-01

The relationship between episodic and semantic memory systems has long been debated. Some authors argue that episodic memory is contingent on semantic memory (Tulving 1984), while others postulate that both systems are independent since they can be selectively damaged (Squire 1987). The interaction between these memory systems is particularly important in the elderly, since the dissociation of episodic and semantic memory defects characterize different aging-related pathologies. Here, we investigated the interaction between semantic knowledge and episodic memory processes associated with faces in elderly subjects using an experimental paradigm where the semantic encoding of famous and unknown faces was compared to their episodic recognition. Results showed that the level of semantic awareness of items affected the recognition of those items in the episodic memory task. Event-related magnetic fields confirmed this interaction between episodic and semantic memory: ERFs related to the old/new effect during the episodic task were markedly different for famous and unknown faces. The old/new effect for famous faces involved sustained activities maximal over right temporal sensors, showing a spatio-temporal pattern partly similar to that found for famous versus unknown faces during the semantic task. By contrast, an old/new effect for unknown faces was observed on left parieto-occipital sensors. These findings suggest that the episodic memory for famous faces activated the retrieval of stored semantic information, whereas it was based on items' perceptual features for unknown faces. Overall, our results show that semantic information interfered markedly with episodic memory processes and suggested that the neural substrates of these two memory systems overlap.

Recognition memory of newly learned faces.

PubMed

Ishai, Alumit; Yago, Elena

2006-12-11

We used event-related fMRI to study recognition memory of newly learned faces. Caucasian subjects memorized unfamiliar, neutral and happy South Korean faces and 4 days later performed a memory retrieval task in the MR scanner. We predicted that previously seen faces would be recognized faster and more accurately and would elicit stronger neural activation than novel faces. Consistent with our hypothesis, novel faces were recognized more slowly and less accurately than previously seen faces. We found activation in a distributed cortical network that included face-responsive regions in the visual cortex, parietal and prefrontal regions, and the hippocampus. Within all regions, correctly recognized, previously seen faces evoked stronger activation than novel faces. Additionally, in parietal and prefrontal cortices, stronger activation was observed during correct than incorrect trials. Finally, in the hippocampus, false alarms to happy faces elicited stronger responses than false alarms to neutral faces. Our findings suggest that face recognition memory is mediated by stimulus-specific representations stored in extrastriate regions; parietal and prefrontal regions where old and new items are classified; and the hippocampus where veridical memory traces are recovered.

False memory for face in short-term memory and neural activity in human amygdala.

PubMed

Iidaka, Tetsuya; Harada, Tokiko; Sadato, Norihiro

2014-12-03

Human memory is often inaccurate. Similar to words and figures, new faces are often recognized as seen or studied items in long- and short-term memory tests; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this false memory remain elusive. In a previous fMRI study using morphed faces and a standard false memory paradigm, we found that there was a U-shaped response curve of the amygdala to old, new, and lure items. This indicates that the amygdala is more active in response to items that are salient (hit and correct rejection) compared to items that are less salient (false alarm), in terms of memory retrieval. In the present fMRI study, we determined whether the false memory for faces occurs within the short-term memory range (a few seconds), and assessed which neural correlates are involved in veridical and illusory memories. Nineteen healthy participants were scanned by 3T MRI during a short-term memory task using morphed faces. The behavioral results indicated that the occurrence of false memories was within the short-term range. We found that the amygdala displayed a U-shaped response curve to memory items, similar to those observed in our previous study. These results suggest that the amygdala plays a common role in both long- and short-term false memory for faces. We made the following conclusions: First, the amygdala is involved in detecting the saliency of items, in addition to fear, and supports goal-oriented behavior by modulating memory. Second, amygdala activity and response time might be related with a subject's response criterion for similar faces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Super-Memorizers Are Not Super-Recognizers

PubMed Central

Ramon, Meike; Miellet, Sebastien; Dzieciol, Anna M.; Konrad, Boris Nikolai

2016-01-01

Humans have a natural expertise in recognizing faces. However, the nature of the interaction between this critical visual biological skill and memory is yet unclear. Here, we had the unique opportunity to test two individuals who have had exceptional success in the World Memory Championships, including several world records in face-name association memory. We designed a range of face processing tasks to determine whether superior/expert face memory skills are associated with distinctive perceptual strategies for processing faces. Superior memorizers excelled at tasks involving associative face-name learning. Nevertheless, they were as impaired as controls in tasks probing the efficiency of the face system: face inversion and the other-race effect. Super memorizers did not show increased hippocampal volumes, and exhibited optimal generic eye movement strategies when they performed complex multi-item face-name associations. Our data show that the visual computations of the face system are not malleable and are robust to acquired expertise involving extensive training of associative memory. PMID:27008627

Super-Memorizers Are Not Super-Recognizers.

PubMed

Ramon, Meike; Miellet, Sebastien; Dzieciol, Anna M; Konrad, Boris Nikolai; Dresler, Martin; Caldara, Roberto

2016-01-01

Humans have a natural expertise in recognizing faces. However, the nature of the interaction between this critical visual biological skill and memory is yet unclear. Here, we had the unique opportunity to test two individuals who have had exceptional success in the World Memory Championships, including several world records in face-name association memory. We designed a range of face processing tasks to determine whether superior/expert face memory skills are associated with distinctive perceptual strategies for processing faces. Superior memorizers excelled at tasks involving associative face-name learning. Nevertheless, they were as impaired as controls in tasks probing the efficiency of the face system: face inversion and the other-race effect. Super memorizers did not show increased hippocampal volumes, and exhibited optimal generic eye movement strategies when they performed complex multi-item face-name associations. Our data show that the visual computations of the face system are not malleable and are robust to acquired expertise involving extensive training of associative memory.

Neural dynamics associated with semantic and episodic memory for faces: evidence from multiple frequency bands.

PubMed

Zion-Golumbic, Elana; Kutas, Marta; Bentin, Shlomo

2010-02-01

Prior semantic knowledge facilitates episodic recognition memory for faces. To examine the neural manifestation of the interplay between semantic and episodic memory, we investigated neuroelectric dynamics during the creation (study) and the retrieval (test) of episodic memories for famous and nonfamous faces. Episodic memory effects were evident in several EEG frequency bands: theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (9-13 Hz), and gamma (40-100 Hz). Activity in these bands was differentially modulated by preexisting semantic knowledge and by episodic memory, implicating their different functional roles in memory. More specifically, theta activity and alpha suppression were larger for old compared to new faces at test regardless of fame, but were both larger for famous faces during study. This pattern of selective semantic effects suggests that the theta and alpha responses, which are primarily associated with episodic memory, reflect utilization of semantic information only when it is beneficial for task performance. In contrast, gamma activity decreased between the first (study) and second (test) presentation of a face, but overall was larger for famous than nonfamous faces. Hence, the gamma rhythm seems to be primarily related to activation of preexisting neural representations that may contribute to the formation of new episodic traces. Taken together, these data provide new insights into the complex interaction between semantic and episodic memory for faces and the neural dynamics associated with mnemonic processes.

On the flexibility of social source memory: a test of the emotional incongruity hypothesis.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel; Kroneisen, Meike; Giang, Trang

2012-11-01

A popular hypothesis in evolutionary psychology posits that reciprocal altruism is supported by a cognitive module that helps cooperative individuals to detect and remember cheaters. Consistent with this hypothesis, a source memory advantage for faces of cheaters (better memory for the cheating context in which these faces were encountered) was observed in previous studies. Here, we examined whether positive or negative expectancies would influence source memory for cheaters and cooperators. A cooperation task with virtual opponents was used in Experiments 1 and 2. Source memory for the emotionally incongruent information was enhanced relative to the congruent information: In Experiment 1, source memory was best for cheaters with likable faces and for cooperators with unlikable faces; in Experiment 2, source memory was better for smiling cheater faces than for smiling cooperator faces, and descriptively better for angry cooperator faces than for angry cheater faces. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the emotional incongruity effect generalizes to 3rd-party reputational information (descriptions of cheating and trustworthy behavior). The results are inconsistent with the assumption of a highly specific cheater detection module. Focusing on expectancy-incongruent information may represent a more efficient, general, and hence more adaptive memory strategy for remembering exchange-relevant information than focusing only on cheaters.

Effects of oxytocin on behavioral and ERP measures of recognition memory for own-race and other-race faces in women and men

PubMed Central

Herzmann, Grit; Bird, Christopher W.; Freeman, Megan; Curran, Tim

2013-01-01

Oxytocin has been shown to affect human social information processing including recognition memory for faces. Here we investigated the neural processes underlying the effect of oxytocin on memorizing own-race and other-race faces in men and women. In a placebo-controlled, doubleblind, between-subject study, participants received either oxytocin or placebo before studying own-race and other-race faces. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during both the study and recognition phase to investigate neural correlates of oxytocin’s effect on memory encoding, memory retrieval, and perception. Oxytocin increased the accuracy of familiarity judgments in the recognition test. Neural correlates for this effect were found in ERPs related to memory encoding and retrieval but not perception. In contrast to its facilitating effects on familiarity, oxytocin impaired recollection judgments, but in men only. Oxytocin did not differentially affect own-race and other-race faces. This study shows that oxytocin influences memory, but not perceptual processes, in a face recognition task and is the first to reveal sex differences in the effect of oxytocin on face memory. Contrary to recent findings in oxytocin and moral decision making, oxytocin did not preferentially improve memory for own-race faces. PMID:23648370

Effects of oxytocin on behavioral and ERP measures of recognition memory for own-race and other-race faces in women and men.

PubMed

Herzmann, Grit; Bird, Christopher W; Freeman, Megan; Curran, Tim

2013-10-01

Oxytocin has been shown to affect human social information processing including recognition memory for faces. Here we investigated the neural processes underlying the effect of oxytocin on memorizing own-race and other-race faces in men and women. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind, between-subject study, participants received either oxytocin or placebo before studying own-race and other-race faces. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during both the study and recognition phase to investigate neural correlates of oxytocin's effect on memory encoding, memory retrieval, and perception. Oxytocin increased the accuracy of familiarity judgments in the recognition test. Neural correlates for this effect were found in ERPs related to memory encoding and retrieval but not perception. In contrast to its facilitating effects on familiarity, oxytocin impaired recollection judgments, but in men only. Oxytocin did not differentially affect own-race and other-race faces. This study shows that oxytocin influences memory, but not perceptual processes, in a face recognition task and is the first to reveal sex differences in the effect of oxytocin on face memory. Contrary to recent findings in oxytocin and moral decision making, oxytocin did not preferentially improve memory for own-race faces. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sex influence on face recognition memory moderated by presentation duration and reencoding.

PubMed

Weirich, Sebastian; Hoffmann, Ferdinand; Meissner, Lucia; Heinz, Andreas; Bengner, Thomas

2011-11-01

It has been suggested that women have a better face recognition memory than men. Here we analyzed whether this advantage depends on a better encoding or consolidation of information and if the advantage is visible during short-term memory (STM), only, or whether it also remains evident in long-term memory (LTM). We tested short- and long-term face recognition memory in 36 nonclinical participants (19 women). We varied the duration of item presentation (1, 5, and 10 s), the time of testing (immediately after the study phase, 1 hr, and 24 hr later), and the possibility to reencode items (none, immediately after the study phase, after 1 hr). Women showed better overall face recognition memory than men (ηp² = .15, p < .05). We found this advantage, however, only with a longer duration of item presentation (interaction effect Sex × ηp² = .16, p < .05). Women's advantage in face recognition was visible mainly if participants had the possibility to reencode faces during former test trials. Our results suggest women do not have a better face recognition memory than men per se, but may profit more than men from longer durations of presentation during encoding or the possibility for reencoding. Future research on sex differences in face recognition memory should explicate possible causes for the better encoding of face information in women.

Hemifield memory for attractiveness.

PubMed

Deblieck, C; Zaidel, D W

2003-07-01

In order to determine whether or not facial attractiveness plays a role in hemispheric facial memory, 35 right-handed participants first assigned attractiveness ratings to faces and then performed a recognition test on those faces in the left visual half-field (LVF) and right visual half-field (RVF). We found significant interactions between the experimental factors and visual half-field. There were significant differences in the extreme ends of the rating scale, that is, the very unattractive versus the very attractive faces: Female participants remembered very attractive faces of both women and men, with memory being superior in the RVF than in the LVF. In contrast, the male participants remembered very unattractive faces of both women and men; RVF memory was better than the LVF for women faces while for men faces memory was superior in the LVF. The interactions with visual half-field suggest that hemispheric biases in remembering faces are influenced by degree of attractiveness.

A new selective developmental deficit: Impaired object recognition with normal face recognition.

PubMed

Germine, Laura; Cashdollar, Nathan; Düzel, Emrah; Duchaine, Bradley

2011-05-01

Studies of developmental deficits in face recognition, or developmental prosopagnosia, have shown that individuals who have not suffered brain damage can show face recognition impairments coupled with normal object recognition (Duchaine and Nakayama, 2005; Duchaine et al., 2006; Nunn et al., 2001). However, no developmental cases with the opposite dissociation - normal face recognition with impaired object recognition - have been reported. The existence of a case of non-face developmental visual agnosia would indicate that the development of normal face recognition mechanisms does not rely on the development of normal object recognition mechanisms. To see whether a developmental variant of non-face visual object agnosia exists, we conducted a series of web-based object and face recognition tests to screen for individuals showing object recognition memory impairments but not face recognition impairments. Through this screening process, we identified AW, an otherwise normal 19-year-old female, who was then tested in the lab on face and object recognition tests. AW's performance was impaired in within-class visual recognition memory across six different visual categories (guns, horses, scenes, tools, doors, and cars). In contrast, she scored normally on seven tests of face recognition, tests of memory for two other object categories (houses and glasses), and tests of recall memory for visual shapes. Testing confirmed that her impairment was not related to a general deficit in lower-level perception, object perception, basic-level recognition, or memory. AW's results provide the first neuropsychological evidence that recognition memory for non-face visual object categories can be selectively impaired in individuals without brain damage or other memory impairment. These results indicate that the development of recognition memory for faces does not depend on intact object recognition memory and provide further evidence for category-specific dissociations in visual recognition. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

Face format at encoding affects the other-race effect in face memory.

PubMed

Zhao, Mintao; Hayward, William G; Bülthoff, Isabelle

2014-08-07

Memory of own-race faces is generally better than memory of other-races faces. This other-race effect (ORE) in face memory has been attributed to differences in contact, holistic processing, and motivation to individuate faces. Since most studies demonstrate the ORE with participants learning and recognizing static, single-view faces, it remains unclear whether the ORE can be generalized to different face learning conditions. Using an old/new recognition task, we tested whether face format at encoding modulates the ORE. The results showed a significant ORE when participants learned static, single-view faces (Experiment 1). In contrast, the ORE disappeared when participants learned rigidly moving faces (Experiment 2). Moreover, learning faces displayed from four discrete views produced the same results as learning rigidly moving faces (Experiment 3). Contact with other-race faces was correlated with the magnitude of the ORE. Nonetheless, the absence of the ORE in Experiments 2 and 3 cannot be readily explained by either more frequent contact with other-race faces or stronger motivation to individuate them. These results demonstrate that the ORE is sensitive to face format at encoding, supporting the hypothesis that relative involvement of holistic and featural processing at encoding mediates the ORE observed in face memory. © 2014 ARVO.

Destination memory for emotional information in older adults.

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Fasotti, Luciano; Allain, Philippe

2015-01-01

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Destination memory, remembering the destination of the information that one tells, shows significant age-related decline. In the present paper, the authors sought to determine whether destination memory can be improved in older adults using emotional stimuli. This aim was motivated by findings showing better context memory for emotional than for neutral information in older adults. Younger and older adults were asked to tell neutral facts to three types of faces: a neutral one, an emotionally positive one, and an emotionally negative one. On a later recognition test, participants were asked to associate each previously told fact with the face to whom it was told. Destination memory performance was better for facts told to negative than to positive faces, and the latter memory was better than for neutral faces in older adults. Older adults seem to place higher emphasis on emotional material relative to neutral faces, showing better memory for the association between statements and emotional faces.

Remembering beauty: roles of orbitofrontal and hippocampal regions in successful memory encoding of attractive faces.

PubMed

Tsukiura, Takashi; Cabeza, Roberto

2011-01-01

Behavioral data have shown that attractive faces are better remembered but the neural mechanisms of this effect are largely unknown. To investigate this issue, female participants were scanned with event-related functional MRI (fMRI) while rating the attractiveness of male faces. Memory for the faces was tested after fMRI scanning and was used to identify successful encoding activity (subsequent memory paradigm). As expected, attractive faces were remembered better than other faces. The study yielded three main fMRI findings. First, activity in the right orbitofrontal cortex increased linearly as a function of attractiveness ratings. Second, activity in the left hippocampus increased as a function of subsequent memory (subsequent misses

Remembering beauty: Roles of orbitofrontal and hippocampal regions in successful memory encoding of attractive faces

PubMed Central

Tsukiura, Takashi; Cabeza, Roberto

2010-01-01

Behavioral data have shown that attractive faces are better remembered but the neural mechanisms of this effect are largely unknown. To investigate this issue, female participants were scanned with event-related functional MRI (fMRI) while rating the attractiveness of male faces. Memory for the faces was tested after fMRI scanning and was used to identify successful encoding activity (subsequent memory paradigm). As expected, attractive faces were remembered better than other faces. The study yielded three main fMRI findings. First, activity in the right orbitofrontal cortex increased linearly as a function of attractiveness ratings. Second, activity in the left hippocampus increased as a function of subsequent memory (subsequent misses

Cognitive Correlates of Perseverations in Individuals with Memory Impairment.

PubMed

Kavé, Gitit; Heinik, Jeremia

2017-02-01

This study examines which cognitive measure best accounts for perseverations in individuals with memory impairment. The sample included 85 individuals, of whom 21 had subjective memory concerns, 27 had mild cognitive impairment, and 37 had Alzheimer's disease. Participants produced responses on a semantic category fluency task and on the ideational fluency (IF) task from the Cambridge Cognitive Examination-Revised. Measures of word finding, working memory, and abstract thinking were also assessed. Significant group differences in percentage of perseverations emerged on both tasks. No cognitive measure accounted for the percentage of perseverations on the semantic fluency task. A measure of abstract thinking was the best predictor of the percentage of perseverations on the IF task, followed by a measure of working memory. The underlying cognitive mechanisms that lead to perseverations differ across tasks, with perseverations on the IF task reflecting both conceptual deficits and working memory limitations. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Effect of positive emotion on consolidation of memory for faces: the modulation of facial valence and facial gender.

PubMed

Wang, Bo

2013-01-01

Studies have shown that emotion elicited after learning enhances memory consolidation. However, no prior studies have used facial photos as stimuli. This study examined the effect of post-learning positive emotion on consolidation of memory for faces. During the learning participants viewed neutral, positive, or negative faces. Then they were assigned to a condition in which they either watched a 9-minute positive video clip, or a 9-minute neutral video. Then 30 minutes after the learning participants took a surprise memory test, in which they made "remember", "know", and "new" judgements. The findings are: (1) Positive emotion enhanced consolidation of recognition for negative male faces, but impaired consolidation of recognition for negative female faces; (2) For males, recognition for negative faces was equivalent to that for positive faces; for females, recognition for negative faces was better than that for positive faces. Our study provides the important evidence that effect of post-learning emotion on memory consolidation can extend to facial stimuli and such an effect can be modulated by facial valence and facial gender. The findings may shed light on establishing models concerning the influence of emotion on memory consolidation.

Cognitive control, attention, and the other race effect in memory.

PubMed

Brown, Thackery I; Uncapher, Melina R; Chow, Tiffany E; Eberhardt, Jennifer L; Wagner, Anthony D

2017-01-01

People are better at remembering faces from their own race than other races-a phenomenon with significant societal implications. This Other Race Effect (ORE) in memory could arise from different attentional allocation to, and cognitive control over, same- and other-race faces during encoding. Deeper or more differentiated processing of same-race faces could yield more robust representations of same- vs. other-race faces that could support better recognition memory. Conversely, to the extent that other-race faces may be characterized by lower perceptual expertise, attention and cognitive control may be more important for successful encoding of robust, distinct representations of these stimuli. We tested a mechanistic model in which successful encoding of same- and other-race faces, indexed by subsequent memory performance, is differentially predicted by (a) engagement of frontoparietal networks subserving top-down attention and cognitive control, and (b) interactions between frontoparietal networks and fusiform cortex face processing. European American (EA) and African American (AA) participants underwent fMRI while intentionally encoding EA and AA faces, and ~24 hrs later performed an "old/new" recognition memory task. Univariate analyses revealed greater engagement of frontoparietal top-down attention and cognitive control networks during encoding for same- vs. other-race faces, stemming particularly from a failure to engage the cognitive control network during processing of other-race faces that were subsequently forgotten. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed that OREs were characterized by greater functional interaction between medial intraparietal sulcus, a component of the top-down attention network, and fusiform cortex during same- than other-race face encoding. Together, these results suggest that group-based face memory biases at least partially stem from differential allocation of cognitive control and top-down attention during encoding, such that same-race memory benefits from elevated top-down attentional engagement with face processing regions; conversely, reduced recruitment of cognitive control circuitry appears more predictive of memory failure when encoding out-group faces.

Cognitive control, attention, and the other race effect in memory

PubMed Central

Uncapher, Melina R.; Chow, Tiffany E.; Eberhardt, Jennifer L.; Wagner, Anthony D.

2017-01-01

People are better at remembering faces from their own race than other races–a phenomenon with significant societal implications. This Other Race Effect (ORE) in memory could arise from different attentional allocation to, and cognitive control over, same- and other-race faces during encoding. Deeper or more differentiated processing of same-race faces could yield more robust representations of same- vs. other-race faces that could support better recognition memory. Conversely, to the extent that other-race faces may be characterized by lower perceptual expertise, attention and cognitive control may be more important for successful encoding of robust, distinct representations of these stimuli. We tested a mechanistic model in which successful encoding of same- and other-race faces, indexed by subsequent memory performance, is differentially predicted by (a) engagement of frontoparietal networks subserving top-down attention and cognitive control, and (b) interactions between frontoparietal networks and fusiform cortex face processing. European American (EA) and African American (AA) participants underwent fMRI while intentionally encoding EA and AA faces, and ~24 hrs later performed an “old/new” recognition memory task. Univariate analyses revealed greater engagement of frontoparietal top-down attention and cognitive control networks during encoding for same- vs. other-race faces, stemming particularly from a failure to engage the cognitive control network during processing of other-race faces that were subsequently forgotten. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed that OREs were characterized by greater functional interaction between medial intraparietal sulcus, a component of the top-down attention network, and fusiform cortex during same- than other-race face encoding. Together, these results suggest that group-based face memory biases at least partially stem from differential allocation of cognitive control and top-down attention during encoding, such that same-race memory benefits from elevated top-down attentional engagement with face processing regions; conversely, reduced recruitment of cognitive control circuitry appears more predictive of memory failure when encoding out-group faces. PMID:28282414

Partial and specific source memory for faces associated to other- and self-relevant negative contexts.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Giang, Trang; Buchner, Axel

2012-01-01

Previous research has shown a source memory advantage for faces presented in negative contexts. As yet it remains unclear whether participants remember the specific type of context in which the faces were presented or whether they can only remember that the face was associated with negative valence. In the present study, participants saw faces together with descriptions of two different types of negative behaviour and neutral behaviour. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the participants were able to discriminate between two types of other-relevant negative context information (cheating and disgusting behaviour) in a source memory test. In Experiment 2, we assessed source memory for other-relevant negative (threatening) context information (other-aggressive behaviour) and self-relevant negative context information (self-aggressive behaviour). A multinomial source memory model was used to separately assess partial source memory for the negative valence of the behaviour and specific source memory for the particular type of negative context the face was associated with. In Experiment 1, source memory was specific for the particular type of negative context presented (i.e., cheating or disgusting behaviour). Experiment 2 showed that source memory for other-relevant negative information was more specific than source memory for self-relevant information. Thus, emotional source memory may vary in specificity depending on the degree to which the negative emotional context is perceived as threatening.

The other-race effect does not rely on memory: Evidence from a matching task.

PubMed

Megreya, Ahmed M; White, David; Burton, A Mike

2011-08-01

Viewers are typically better at remembering faces from their own race than from other races; however, it is not yet established whether this effect is due to memorial or perceptual processes. In this study, UK and Egyptian viewers were given a simultaneous face-matching task, in which the target faces were presented upright or upside down. As with previous research using face memory tasks, participants were worse at matching other-race faces than own-race faces and showed a stronger face inversion effect for own-race faces. However, subjects' performance on own and other-race faces was highly correlated. These data provide strong evidence that difficulty in perceptual encoding of unfamiliar faces contributes substantially to the other-race effect and that accounts based entirely on memory cannot capture the full data. Implications for forensic settings are also discussed.

Effects of Lateral Reversal on Recognition Memory for Photographs of Faces.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKelvie, Stuart J.

1983-01-01

Examined recognition memory for photographs of faces in four experiments using students and adults. Results supported a feature (rather than Gestalt) model of facial recognition in which the two sides of the face are different in its memory representation. (JAC)

Contrasting patterns of deficits in visuospatial memory and executive function in patients with major depression with and without ECT referral.

PubMed

Tsaltas, E; Kalogerakou, S; Papakosta, V-M; Kontis, D; Theochari, E; Koutroumpi, M; Anyfandi, E; Michopoulos, I; Poulopoulou, C; Papadimitriou, G; Oulis, P

2011-05-01

The pretreatment neuropsychological profile of drug-resistant patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) referred for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) may differ from that of their drug-respondent MDD counterparts. Such differences could help in identifying distinct MDD subtypes, thus offering insights into the neuropathology underlying differential treatment responses. Depressed patients with ECT referral (ECTs), depressed patients with no ECT referral (NECTs) and non-psychiatric Controls (matched groups, n=15) were assessed with memory and executive function tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). ECTs scored significantly lower than NECTs in the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; p=0.01). NECTs performed worse than Controls in the Paired Associates Learning (PAL) task (p<0.03; Control/NECT p<0.01) and the Spatial Recognition Memory (SRM) task (p<0.05; Controls/NECTs p<0.05); ECTs performed between Controls and NECTs, not differing from either. In the Intra/Extradimensional (IED) set-shifting task, ECTs performed worse that Controls and NECTS (IED: p<0.01; Controls/ECTs p<0.01), particularly in the shift phases, which suggests reduced attentional flexibility. In Stockings of Cambridge (SOC), ECTs abandoned the test early more often than Controls and NECTs (H=11, p<0.01) but ECTs who completed SOC performed comparably to the other two groups. A double dissociation emerged from the comparison of cognitive profiles of ECT and NECT patients. ECTs showed executive deficits, particularly in attentional flexibility, but mild deficits in tests of visuospatial memory. NECTs presented the opposite pattern. This suggests predominantly frontostriatal involvement in ECT versus temporal involvement in NECT depressives.

Destination memory and familiarity: better memory for conversations with Elvis Presley than with unknown people.

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Omigie, Diana; Samson, Séverine

2015-06-01

Familiarity is assumed to exert a beneficial effect on memory in older adults. Our paper investigated this issue specifically for destination memory, that is, memory of the destination of previously relayed information. Young and older adults were told familiar (Experiment 1) and unfamiliar (Experiment 2) proverbs associated with pictures depicting faces of celebrities (e.g., Elvis Presley) or unknown people, with a specific proverb assigned to each face. In a later recognition task, participants were presented with the previously exposed proverb-face pairs and for each pair had to decide whether they had previously relayed the given proverb to the given face. In general, destination performance was found to be higher for familiar than for unfamiliar faces. However while there was no difference between the two groups when the proverbs being relayed were unfamiliar, the advantage of face familiarity on destination memory was present only for older adults when the proverbs being relayed were familiar. Our results show that destination memory in older adults is sensitive to familiarity of both destination and output information.

Wechsler Memory Scale-III Faces test performance in patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Seelye, Adriana M; Howieson, Diane B; Wild, Katherine V; Moore, Mindy Milar; Kaye, Jeffrey A

2009-08-01

Little is known about the sensitivity of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Third Edition (WMS-III) Faces subtest to memory impairment associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this study, Faces performance was examined in 24 MCI patients, 46 mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and 98 elderly controls. We hypothesized that participants with diagnoses of MCI or AD would be impaired relative to controls on Faces. Analyses showed that AD participants performed significantly worse than MCI and intact participants, although there were no significant differences between MCI and intact participants. Data suggest that brain areas specialized for face recognition memory may be less affected by MCI and mild AD than regions specialized for verbal memory.

Dissecting contributions of prefrontal cortex and fusiform face area to face working memory.

PubMed

Druzgal, T Jason; D'Esposito, Mark

2003-08-15

Interactions between prefrontal cortex (PFC) and stimulus-specific visual cortical association areas are hypothesized to mediate visual working memory in behaving monkeys. To clarify the roles for homologous regions in humans, event-related fMRI was used to assess neural activity in PFC and fusiform face area (FFA) of subjects performing a delay-recognition task for faces. In both PFC and FFA, activity increased parametrically with memory load during encoding and maintenance of face stimuli, despite quantitative differences in the magnitude of activation. Moreover, timing differences in PFC and FFA activation during memory encoding and retrieval implied a context dependence in the flow of neural information. These results support existing neurophysiological models of visual working memory developed in the nonhuman primate.

Spatial But Not Oculomotor Information Biases Perceptual Memory: Evidence From Face Perception and Cognitive Modeling.

PubMed

Wantz, Andrea L; Lobmaier, Janek S; Mast, Fred W; Senn, Walter

2017-08-01

Recent research put forward the hypothesis that eye movements are integrated in memory representations and are reactivated when later recalled. However, "looking back to nothing" during recall might be a consequence of spatial memory retrieval. Here, we aimed at distinguishing between the effect of spatial and oculomotor information on perceptual memory. Participants' task was to judge whether a morph looked rather like the first or second previously presented face. Crucially, faces and morphs were presented in a way that the morph reactivated oculomotor and/or spatial information associated with one of the previously encoded faces. Perceptual face memory was largely influenced by these manipulations. We considered a simple computational model with an excellent match (4.3% error) that expresses these biases as a linear combination of recency, saccade, and location. Surprisingly, saccades did not play a role. The results suggest that spatial and temporal rather than oculomotor information biases perceptual face memory. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Orbitofrontal and hippocampal contributions to memory for face-name associations: the rewarding power of a smile.

PubMed

Tsukiura, Takashi; Cabeza, Roberto

2008-01-01

Memory processes can be enhanced by reward, and social signals such a smiling face can be rewarding to humans. Using event-related functional MRI (fMRI), we investigated the rewarding effect of a simple smile during the encoding and retrieval of face-name associations. During encoding, participants viewed smiling or neutral faces, each paired with a name, and during retrieval, only names were presented, and participants retrieved the associated facial expressions. Successful memory activity of face-name associations was identified by comparing remembered vs. forgotten trials during both encoding and retrieval, and the effect of a smile was identified by comparing successful memory trials for smiling vs. neutral faces. The study yielded three main findings. First, behavioral results showed that the retrieval of face-name associations was more accurate and faster for smiling than neutral faces. Second, the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus showed successful encoding and retrieval activations, which were greater for smiling than neutral faces. Third, functional connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus during successful encoding and retrieval was stronger for smiling than neutral faces. As a part of the reward system, the orbitofrontal cortex may modulate memory processes of face-name associations mediated by the hippocampus. Interestingly, the effect of a smile during retrieval was found even though only names were presented as retrieval cues, suggesting that the effect was mediated by face imagery. Taken together, the results demonstrate how rewarding social signals from a smiling face can enhance relational memory for face-name associations.

Epilepsy increases vulnerability of long-term face recognition to proactive interference.

PubMed

Bengner, T; Malina, T; Lindenau, M; Voges, B; Goebell, E; Stodieck, S

2006-02-01

Proactive interference (PI) decreases short- and long-term memory in healthy subjects. Neurological patients exhibit a heightened PI effect on short-term memory. It is, however, not known if PI affects long-term memory in neurological patients. We analyzed whether epilepsy heightens the negative effect of PI on long-term face memory. PI was induced by a list of 20 faces learned 24 hours prior to a target list of 20 faces. We tested immediate and 24-hour recognition for both lists. Twelve healthy controls and 42 patients with generalized epilepsy or temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) were studied. PI led to a decrease in 24-hour recognition in patients with generalized epilepsy and TLE but not in controls. Thus, PI may cause long-term memory disturbances in epilepsy patients. PI was also associated with decreased short-term memory, but only in right TLE. This confirms the dominant role of the right temporal lobe in short-term face memory.

Electrocortical and ocular indices of attention to fearful and neutral faces presented under high and low working memory load.

PubMed

MacNamara, Annmarie; Schmidt, Joseph; Zelinsky, Gregory J; Hajcak, Greg

2012-12-01

Working memory load reduces the late positive potential (LPP), consistent with the notion that functional activation of the DLPFC attenuates neural indices of sustained attention. Visual attention also modulates the LPP. In the present study, we sought to determine whether working memory load might exert its influence on ERPs by reducing fixations to arousing picture regions. We simultaneously recorded eye-tracking and EEG while participants performed a working memory task interspersed with the presentation of task-irrelevant fearful and neutral faces. As expected, fearful compared to neutral faces elicited larger N170 and LPP amplitudes; in addition, working memory load reduced the N170 and the LPP. Participants made more fixations to arousing regions of neutral faces and faces presented under high working memory load. Therefore, working memory load did not induce avoidance of arousing picture regions and visual attention cannot explain load effects on the N170 and LPP. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Memory for fearful faces across development: specialization of amygdala nuclei and medial temporal lobe structures.

PubMed

Pinabiaux, Charlotte; Hertz-Pannier, Lucie; Chiron, Catherine; Rodrigo, Sébastian; Jambaqué, Isabelle; Noulhiane, Marion

2013-01-01

Enhanced memory for emotional faces is a significant component of adaptive social interactions, but little is known on its neural developmental correlates. We explored the role of amygdaloid complex (AC) and medial temporal lobe (MTL) in emotional memory recognition across development, by comparing fMRI activations of successful memory encoding of fearful and neutral faces in children (n = 12; 8-12 years) and adolescents (n = 12; 13-17 years). Memory for fearful faces was enhanced compared with neutral ones in adolescents, as opposed to children. In adolescents, activations associated with successful encoding of fearful faces were centered on baso-lateral AC nuclei, hippocampus, enthorhinal and parahippocampal cortices. In children, successful encoding of fearful faces relied on activations of centro-mesial AC nuclei, which was not accompanied by functional activation of MTL memory structures. Successful encoding of neutral faces depended on activations in anterior MTL region (hippocampal head and body) in adolescents, but more posterior ones (hippocampal tail and parahippocampal cortex) in children. In conclusion, two distinct functional specializations emerge from childhood to adolescence and result in the enhancement of memory for these particular stimuli: the specialization of baso-lateral AC nuclei, which is associated with the expertise in processing emotional facial expression, and which is intimately related to the specialization of MTL memory network. How the interplay between specialization of AC nuclei and of MTL memory structures is fundamental for the edification of social interactions remains to be elucidated.

Memory for fearful faces across development: specialization of amygdala nuclei and medial temporal lobe structures

PubMed Central

Pinabiaux, Charlotte; Hertz-Pannier, Lucie; Chiron, Catherine; Rodrigo, Sébastian; Jambaqué, Isabelle; Noulhiane, Marion

2013-01-01

Enhanced memory for emotional faces is a significant component of adaptive social interactions, but little is known on its neural developmental correlates. We explored the role of amygdaloid complex (AC) and medial temporal lobe (MTL) in emotional memory recognition across development, by comparing fMRI activations of successful memory encoding of fearful and neutral faces in children (n = 12; 8–12 years) and adolescents (n = 12; 13–17 years). Memory for fearful faces was enhanced compared with neutral ones in adolescents, as opposed to children. In adolescents, activations associated with successful encoding of fearful faces were centered on baso-lateral AC nuclei, hippocampus, enthorhinal and parahippocampal cortices. In children, successful encoding of fearful faces relied on activations of centro-mesial AC nuclei, which was not accompanied by functional activation of MTL memory structures. Successful encoding of neutral faces depended on activations in anterior MTL region (hippocampal head and body) in adolescents, but more posterior ones (hippocampal tail and parahippocampal cortex) in children. In conclusion, two distinct functional specializations emerge from childhood to adolescence and result in the enhancement of memory for these particular stimuli: the specialization of baso-lateral AC nuclei, which is associated with the expertise in processing emotional facial expression, and which is intimately related to the specialization of MTL memory network. How the interplay between specialization of AC nuclei and of MTL memory structures is fundamental for the edification of social interactions remains to be elucidated. PMID:24399958

Situation Tracking in Large Data Streams

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-02-01

Pike, R. 1989: Different Ways to Cue a Coherent Memory System: A Theory for Episodic , Semantic , and Procedural Tasks. Psychological Review, 96(2), 208...to extract general concept models, such as Latent Semantic Indexing. This technique generally extracts a single topic model, and does not extract a...2001. Semantic leaps: frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. Cambridge University Press. Humphreys, M. S, Bain, J. D

Determination of Primary Spectral Bands for Remote Sensing of Aquatic Environments

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-12-20

spectral bands are always facing the possibility of missing important spectral features of special cases, such as some coral reefs and/or seagrass ...Res. 1998, 103(C 10), 21,601-621,609. 16. Kirk, J. T. 0. 1994 Light & Photosynthesis in Aquatic Ecosystems, University Press, Cambridge. 17. Lee, Z

The Cambridge Mindreading (CAM) Face-Voice Battery: Testing complex emotion recognition in adults with and without Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Golan, Ofer; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Hill, Jacqueline

2006-02-01

Adults with Asperger Syndrome (AS) can recognise simple emotions and pass basic theory of mind tasks, but have difficulties recognising more complex emotions and mental states. This study describes a new battery of tasks, testing recognition of 20 complex emotions and mental states from faces and voices. The battery was given to males and females with AS and matched controls. Results showed the AS group performed worse than controls overall, on emotion recognition from faces and voices and on 12/20 specific emotions. Females recognised faces better than males regardless of diagnosis, and males with AS had more difficulties recognising emotions from faces than from voices. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to social functioning in AS.

Age-related differences in memory expression during infancy: using eye-tracking to measure relational memory in 6- and 12-month-olds.

PubMed

Richmond, Jenny L; Power, Jessica

2014-09-01

Relational memory, or the ability to bind components of an event into a network of linked representations, is a primary function of the hippocampus. Here we extend eye-tracking research showing that infants are capable of forming memories for the relation between arbitrarily paired scenes and faces, by looking at age-related changes in relational memory over the first year of life. Six- and 12-month-old infants were familiarized with pairs of faces and scenes before being tested with arrays of three familiar faces that were presented on a familiar scene. Preferential looking at the face that matches the scene is typically taken as evidence of relational memory. The results showed that while 6-month-old showed very early preferential looking when face/scene pairs were tested immediately, 12-month-old did not exhibit evidence of relational memory either immediately or after a short delay. Theoretical implications for the functional development of the hippocampus and practical implications for the use of eye tracking to measure memory during early life are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Face Recognition Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders Are Both Domain Specific and Process Specific

PubMed Central

Weigelt, Sarah; Koldewyn, Kami; Kanwisher, Nancy

2013-01-01

Although many studies have reported face identity recognition deficits in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), two fundamental question remains: 1) Is this deficit “process specific” for face memory in particular, or does it extend to perceptual discrimination of faces as well? And 2) Is the deficit “domain specific” for faces, or is it found more generally for other social or even nonsocial stimuli? The answers to these questions are important both for understanding the nature of autism and its developmental etiology, and for understanding the functional architecture of face processing in the typical brain. Here we show that children with ASD are impaired (compared to age and IQ-matched typical children) in face memory, but not face perception, demonstrating process specificity. Further, we find no deficit for either memory or perception of places or cars, indicating domain specificity. Importantly, we further showed deficits in both the perception and memory of bodies, suggesting that the relevant domain of deficit may be social rather than specifically facial. These results provide a more precise characterization of the cognitive phenotype of autism and further indicate a functional dissociation between face memory and face perception. PMID:24040276

Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer's disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity.

PubMed

Sava, Alina-Alexandra; Krolak-Salmon, Pierre; Delphin-Combe, Floriane; Cloarec, Morgane; Chainay, Hanna

2017-01-01

Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.

Memory for angry faces, impulsivity, and problematic behavior in adolescence.

PubMed

d'Acremont, Mathieu; Van der Linden, Martial

2007-04-01

Research has shown that cognitive processes like the attribution of hostile intention or angry emotion to others contribute to the development and maintenance of conduct problems. However, the role of memory has been understudied in comparison with attribution biases. The aim of this study was thus to test if a memory bias for angry faces was related to conduct problems in youth. Adolescents from a junior secondary school were presented with angry and happy faces and were later asked to recognize the same faces with a neutral expression. They also completed an impulsivity questionnaire. A teacher assessed their behavior. The results showed that a better recognition of angry faces than happy faces predicted conduct problems and hyperactivity/inattention as reported by the teacher. The memory bias effect was more pronounced for impulsive adolescents. It is suggested that a memory bias for angry faces favors disruptive behavior but that a good ability to control impulses may moderate the negative impact of this bias.

Interfering with memory for faces: The cost of doing two things at once.

PubMed

Wammes, Jeffrey D; Fernandes, Myra A

2016-01-01

We inferred the processes critical for episodic retrieval of faces by measuring susceptibility to memory interference from different distracting tasks. Experiment 1 examined recognition of studied faces under full attention (FA) or each of two divided attention (DA) conditions requiring concurrent decisions to auditorily presented letters. Memory was disrupted in both DA relative to FA conditions, a result contrary to a material-specific account of interference effects. Experiment 2 investigated whether the magnitude of interference depended on competition between concurrent tasks for common processing resources. Studied faces were presented either upright (configurally processed) or inverted (featurally processed). Recognition was completed under FA, or DA with one of two face-based distracting tasks requiring either featural or configural processing. We found an interaction: memory for upright faces was lower under DA when the distracting task required configural than featural processing, while the reverse was true for memory of inverted faces. Across experiments, the magnitude of memory interference was similar (a 19% or 20% decline from FA) regardless of whether the materials in the distracting task overlapped with the to-be-remembered information. Importantly, interference was significantly larger (42%) when the processing demands of the distracting and target retrieval task overlapped, suggesting a processing-specific account of memory interference.

Signing below the dotted line: signature position as a marker of vulnerability for visuospatial processing difficulties

PubMed Central

Whitelock, Claire F; Agyepong, Heather NAO; Patterson, Karalyn; Ersche, Karen D

2015-01-01

Almost one-third of the participants in a neuropsychological study signed the consent form below the given line. The relationship between a signature position on or below the line and participants’ cognitive function was investigated. Fifty drug-dependent individuals, 50 of their siblings, and 50 unrelated control participants completed a battery of neuropsychological tests using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). Individuals signing below, rather than on, the line performed more poorly on tests of visuospatial memory, but no differently on other cognitive tests. Signature positioning may be a soft sign for impairment of the mechanisms involved in visuospatial memory. PMID:24313358

The mere exposure effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Winograd, E; Goldstein, F C; Monarch, E S; Peluso, J P; Goldman, W P

1999-01-01

The mere exposure effect was examined in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). Twenty patients and 20 elderly controls judged the physical characteristics of faces. Implicit memory was tested later by presenting pairs of faces (old and new) and asking participants which faces they liked better. Patients and controls exhibited above chance preference for previously exposed faces. Experiment 2 evaluated whether the preserved implicit memory of patients was mediated by explicit memory. Patients and controls again judged faces but then later chose which faces they had seen before. Patients exhibited impaired recognition memory compared to controls. These findings suggest that a mere exposure effect for unfamiliar faces is present in mild to moderate AD. The results are discussed in terms of perceptual and conceptual priming and relatively spared occipital lobe functioning in early AD.

What drives social in-group biases in face recognition memory? ERP evidence from the own-gender bias

PubMed Central

Kemter, Kathleen; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Wiese, Holger

2014-01-01

It is well established that memory is more accurate for own-relative to other-race faces (own-race bias), which has been suggested to result from larger perceptual expertise for own-race faces. Previous studies also demonstrated better memory for own-relative to other-gender faces, which is less likely to result from differences in perceptual expertise, and rather may be related to social in-group vs out-group categorization. We examined neural correlates of the own-gender bias using event-related potentials (ERP). In a recognition memory experiment, both female and male participants remembered faces of their respective own gender more accurately compared with other-gender faces. ERPs during learning yielded significant differences between the subsequent memory effects (subsequently remembered – subsequently forgotten) for own-gender compared with other-gender faces in the occipito-temporal P2 and the central N200, whereas neither later subsequent memory effects nor ERP old/new effects at test reflected a neural correlate of the own-gender bias. We conclude that the own-gender bias is mainly related to study phase processes, which is in line with sociocognitive accounts. PMID:23474824

Recognition-induced forgetting of faces in visual long-term memory.

PubMed

Rugo, Kelsi F; Tamler, Kendall N; Woodman, Geoffrey F; Maxcey, Ashleigh M

2017-10-01

Despite more than a century of evidence that long-term memory for pictures and words are different, much of what we know about memory comes from studies using words. Recent research examining visual long-term memory has demonstrated that recognizing an object induces the forgetting of objects from the same category. This recognition-induced forgetting has been shown with a variety of everyday objects. However, unlike everyday objects, faces are objects of expertise. As a result, faces may be immune to recognition-induced forgetting. However, despite excellent memory for such stimuli, we found that faces were susceptible to recognition-induced forgetting. Our findings have implications for how models of human memory account for recognition-induced forgetting as well as represent objects of expertise and consequences for eyewitness testimony and the justice system.

A Head Start to a Healthy Heart

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2002-01-01

Cambridge Heart, Inc., has licensed the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration-cleared tool to identify those at risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD). The Microvolt T-Wave Alternans Test(TM) was invented by Dr. Richard J. Cohen, a professor at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Division of Health Sciences and Technology, with developmental support and funding from NASA's Johnson Space Center and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) in Houston, Texas. In 1993, MIT licensed the technology to Cambridge Heart, Inc., a start-up company that Dr. Cohen helped to establish. Cambridge Heart's non-invasive technology measures T-wave alternans, a change from one heartbeat to the next that is too minute to be detected by a standard electrocardiogram. Cardiac patients with such a change in heartbeat regulation are faced with a much greater risk of ventricular arrhythmia and SCD than those without it. The company's ability to measure electrical alternans on a microvolt level has been clinically proven to be just as accurate as - and in some studies, more accurate than - more costly and somewhat risky, invasive procedures, such as electrophysiological testing.

Trials and tribulations of playing the devil's advocate

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Narlikar, Jayant V.

2015-01-01

Beginning with his student days at school and college, the author describes his training at Cambridge with special emphasis on his mentor Fred Hoyle. His early experience of participating in a controversy at Cambridge played a major role in giving him the confidence to defend his scientific ideas. All through his later life he chose areas that were not part of mainstream research. These included the steady state theory and later the quasi steady state cosmology, action at a distance, noncosmological redshifts, quantum conformal cosmology, etc. After being a founding member of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (IOTA) at Cambridge, the author joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai and later moved to Pune to set up the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). He briefly reviews his own work and ends by pointing out the difficulties a non-conformist scientist faces in his professional life. In the conclusion, he mentions his interests in science popularization and science fiction for which he has won awards and appreciation, including UNESCO's Kalinga Prize.

Revised associative inference paradigm confirms relational memory impairment in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Armstrong, Kristan; Williams, Lisa E.; Heckers, Stephan

2013-01-01

Objective Patients with schizophrenia have widespread cognitive impairments, with selective deficits in relational memory. We previously reported a differential relational memory deficit in schizophrenia using the Associative Inference Paradigm (AIP), a task suggested by the Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) initiative to examine relational memory. However, the AIP had limited feasibility for testing in schizophrenia due to high attrition of schizophrenia patients during training. Here we developed and tested a revised version of the AIP to improve feasibility. Method 30 healthy control and 37 schizophrenia subjects received 3 study-test sessions on 3 sets of paired associates: H-F1 (house paired with face), H-F2 (same house paired with new face), and F3-F4 (two novel faces). After training, subjects were tested on the trained, non-inferential Face-Face pairs (F3-F4) and novel, inferential Face-Face pairs (F1-F2), constructed from the faces of the trained House-Face pairs. Results Schizophrenia patients were significantly more impaired on the inferential F1-F2 pairs than the non-inferential F3-F4 pairs, providing evidence for a differential relational memory deficit. Only 8 percent of schizophrenia patients were excluded from testing due to poor training performance. Conclusions The revised AIP confirmed the previous finding of a relational memory deficit in a larger and more representative sample of schizophrenia patients. PMID:22612578

Revised associative inference paradigm confirms relational memory impairment in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Armstrong, Kristan; Williams, Lisa E; Heckers, Stephan

2012-07-01

Patients with schizophrenia have widespread cognitive impairments, with selective deficits in relational memory. We previously reported a differential relational memory deficit in schizophrenia using the Associative Inference Paradigm (AIP), a task suggested by the Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) initiative to examine relational memory. However, the AIP had limited feasibility for testing in schizophrenia because of high attrition of schizophrenia patients during training. Here we developed and tested a revised version of the AIP to improve feasibility. 30 healthy control and 37 schizophrenia subjects received 3 study-test sessions on 3 sets of paired associates: H-F1 (house paired with face), H-F2 (same house paired with new face), and F3-F4 (two novel faces). After training, subjects were tested on the trained, noninferential Face-Face pairs (F3-F4) and novel, inferential Face-Face pairs (F1-F2), constructed from the faces of the trained House-Face pairs. Schizophrenia patients were significantly more impaired on the inferential F1-F2 pairs than the noninferential F3-F4 pairs, providing evidence for a differential relational memory deficit. Only 8% of schizophrenia patients were excluded from testing because of poor training performance. The revised AIP confirmed the previous finding of a relational memory deficit in a larger and more representative sample of schizophrenia patients.

Audiovisual integration supports face-name associative memory formation.

PubMed

Lee, Hweeling; Stirnberg, Rüdiger; Stöcker, Tony; Axmacher, Nikolai

2017-10-01

Prior multisensory experience influences how we perceive our environment, and hence how memories are encoded for subsequent retrieval. This study investigated if audiovisual (AV) integration and associative memory formation rely on overlapping or distinct processes. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging results demonstrate that the neural mechanisms underlying AV integration and associative memory overlap substantially. In particular, activity in anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is increased during AV integration and also determines the success of novel AV face-name association formation. Dynamic causal modeling results further demonstrate how the anterior STS interacts with the associative memory system to facilitate successful memory formation for AV face-name associations. Specifically, the connection of fusiform gyrus to anterior STS is enhanced while the reverse connection is reduced when participants subsequently remembered both face and name. Collectively, our results demonstrate how multisensory associative memories can be formed for subsequent retrieval.

Essentialist thinking predicts decrements in children's memory for racially ambiguous faces.

PubMed

Gaither, Sarah E; Schultz, Jennifer R; Pauker, Kristin; Sommers, Samuel R; Maddox, Keith B; Ambady, Nalini

2014-02-01

Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts children's memory for faces. Seventy-four White children (ages 4-9 years) completed a face-memory task comprising White, Black, and racially ambiguous Black-White faces. Essentialist thinking about race was also assessed (i.e., thinking of race as immutable and biologically based). White children who used essentialist thinking showed the same bias as White adults: They remembered White faces significantly better than they remembered ambiguous and Black faces. However, children who did not use essentialist thinking remembered both White and racially ambiguous faces significantly better than they remembered Black faces. This finding suggests a specific shift in racial thinking wherein the boundaries between racial groups become more discrete, highlighting the importance of how race is conceptualized in judgments of racially ambiguous individuals.

The impact of beliefs about face recognition ability on memory retrieval processes in young and older adults.

PubMed

Humphries, Joyce E; Flowe, Heather D; Hall, Louise C; Williams, Louise C; Ryder, Hannah L

2016-01-01

This study examined whether beliefs about face recognition ability differentially influence memory retrieval in older compared to young adults. Participants evaluated their ability to recognise faces and were also given information about their ability to perceive and recognise faces. The information was ostensibly based on an objective measure of their ability, but in actuality, participants had been randomly assigned the information they received (high ability, low ability or no information control). Following this information, face recognition accuracy for a set of previously studied faces was measured using a remember-know memory paradigm. Older adults rated their ability to recognise faces as poorer compared to young adults. Additionally, negative information about face recognition ability improved only older adults' ability to recognise a previously seen face. Older adults were also found to engage in more familiarity than item-specific processing than young adults, but information about their face recognition ability did not affect face processing style. The role that older adults' memory beliefs have in the meta-cognitive strategies they employ is discussed.

When are Overcomplete Topic Models Identifiable? Uniqueness of Tensor Tucker Decompositions with Structured Sparsity

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-08-14

Communications and Computing, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept., University of California, Irvine, USA 92697. Email : a.anandkumar...uci.edu,mjanzami@uci.edu. Daniel Hsu and Sham Kakade are with Microsoft Research New England, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142. Email : dahsu...Andreas Maurer, Massimiliano Pontil, and Bernardino Romera-Paredes. Sparse coding for multitask and transfer learning. ArxXiv preprint, abs/1209.0738, 2012

Differences in neuropsychological performance between subtypes of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

PubMed

Nedeljkovic, Maja; Kyrios, Michael; Moulding, Richard; Doron, Guy; Wainwright, Kylie; Pantelis, Chris; Purcell, Rosemary; Maruff, Paul

2009-03-01

Neuropsychological studies have suggested that frontal-striatal dysfunction plays a role in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), although findings have been inconsistent, possibly due to heterogeneity within the disorder and methodological issues. The purpose of the present study was therefore to compare the neuropsychological performance of different subtypes of OCD and matched non-clinical controls (NCs) on the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB). Fifty-nine OCD patients and 59 non-clinical controls completed selected tests from CANTAB examining executive function, visual memory and attentional-set shifting. Depression, anxiety and OCD symptoms were also assessed. From 59 OCD patients, four subtypes were identified: (i) washers; (ii) checkers; (iii) obsessionals; and (iv) mixed symptom profile. Comparisons between washers, checkers, obsessionals and NCs indicated few differences, although checkers were generally found to exhibit poorer performance on spatial working memory, while obsessionals performed poorly on the spatial recognition task. Both checkers and the mixed subgroups showed slowed initial movement on the Stockings of Cambridge planning task and poorer pattern recognition relative to NCs. Overall the results suggested greater impairments in performance on neuropsychological tasks in checkers relative to other subtypes, although the observed effects were small and the conclusions limited by the small subtype samples. Future research will need to account for factors that influence neuropsychological performance in OCD subtypes.

Group Face in Korea and the United States: Taking Responsibility for the Individual and the Group

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hahn, Jee-Won; Hatfield, Hunter

2011-01-01

Brown and Levinson's ([1978] Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987) politeness theory has been criticized as being ethnocentric by displaying a Western preoccupation with autonomy and individualism. Many non-western societies, it is argued, are better understood by appealing to cultural discernment or group…

Do pictures of faces, and which ones, capture attention in the inattentional-blindness paradigm?

PubMed

Devue, Christel; Laloyaux, Cédric; Feyers, Dorothée; Theeuwes, Jan; Brédart, Serge

2009-01-01

Faces and self-referential material (eg one's own name) are more likely to capture attention in the inattentional-blindness (IB) paradigm than other stimuli. This effect is presumably due to the meaning of these stimuli rather than to their familiarity [Mack and Rock, 1998 Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)]. In previous work, IB has been investigated mostly with schematic stimuli. In the present study, the generalisability of this finding was tested with photographic stimuli. In support of the view that faces constitute a special category of stimuli, pictures of faces were found to resist more to IB than pictures of common objects (experiment 1) or than pictures of inverted faces (experiment 2). In a third experiment, the influence of face familiarity and identity (the participant's own face, a friend's face, and an unknown face) on IB rates was evaluated. Unexpectedly, no differential resistence to blindness across these three kinds of faces was found. In conclusion, pictures of faces attracted attention more than pictures of objects or inverted faces in the IB paradigm. However, this effect was not dependent on face familiarity or identity.

Matching Faces to Photographs: Poor Performance in Eyewitness Memory (without the Memory)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Megreya, Ahmed M.; Burton, A. Mike

2008-01-01

Eyewitness memory is known to be fallible. We describe 3 experiments that aim to establish baseline performance for recognition of unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 1, viewers were shown live actors or photos (targets), and then immediately presented with arrays of 10 faces (test items). Asked whether the target was present among the test items, and…

The effects of angry and happy expressions on recognition memory for unfamiliar faces in delusion-prone individuals.

PubMed

Larøi, Frank; D'Argembeau, Arnaud; Van der Linden, Martial

2006-12-01

Numerous studies suggest a cognitive bias for threat-related material in delusional ideation. However, few studies have examined this bias using a memory task. We investigated the influence of delusion-proneness on identity and expression memory for angry and happy faces. Participants high and low in delusion-proneness were presented with happy and angry faces and were later asked to recognise the same faces displaying a neutral expression. They also had to remember what the initial expressions of the faces had been. Remember/know/guess judgments were asked for both identity and expression memory. Results showed that delusion-prone participants better recognised the identity of angry faces compared to non-delusional participants. Also, this difference between the two groups was mainly due to a greater number of remember responses in delusion-prone participants. These findings extend previous studies by showing that delusions are associated with a memory bias for threat-related stimuli.

Females scan more than males: a potential mechanism for sex differences in recognition memory.

PubMed

Heisz, Jennifer J; Pottruff, Molly M; Shore, David I

2013-07-01

Recognition-memory tests reveal individual differences in episodic memory; however, by themselves, these tests provide little information regarding the stage (or stages) in memory processing at which differences are manifested. We used eye-tracking technology, together with a recognition paradigm, to achieve a more detailed analysis of visual processing during encoding and retrieval. Although this approach may be useful for assessing differences in memory across many different populations, we focused on sex differences in face memory. Females outperformed males on recognition-memory tests, and this advantage was directly related to females' scanning behavior at encoding. Moreover, additional exposures to the faces reduced sex differences in face recognition, which suggests that males may be able to improve their recognition memory by extracting more information at encoding through increased scanning. A strategy of increased scanning at encoding may prove to be a simple way to enhance memory performance in other populations with memory impairment.

Effects of dopamine D2/D3 receptor antagonism on human planning and spatial working memory.

PubMed

Naef, M; Müller, U; Linssen, A; Clark, L; Robbins, T W; Eisenegger, C

2017-04-25

Psychopharmacological studies in humans suggest important roles for dopamine (DA) D2 receptors in human executive functions, such as cognitive planning and spatial working memory (SWM). However, studies that investigate an impairment of such functions using the selective DA D2/3 receptor antagonist sulpiride have yielded inconsistent results, perhaps because relatively low doses were used. We believe we report for the first time, the effects of a higher (800 mg p.o.) single dose of sulpiride as well as of genetic variation in the DA receptor D2 gene (DA receptor D2 Taq1A polymorphism), on planning and working memory. With 78 healthy male volunteers, we apply a between-groups, placebo-controlled design. We measure outcomes in the difficult versions of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery One-Touch Stockings of Cambridge and the self-ordered SWM task. Volunteers in the sulpiride group showed significant impairments in planning accuracy and, for the more difficult problems, in SWM. Sulpiride administration speeded response latencies in the planning task on the most difficult problems. Volunteers with at least one copy of the minor allele (A1+) of the DA receptor D2 Taq1A polymorphism showed better SWM capacity, regardless of whether they received sulpiride or placebo. There were no effects on blood pressure, heart rate or subjective sedation. In sum, a higher single dose of sulpiride impairs SWM and executive planning functions, in a manner independent of the DA receptor D2 Taq1A polymorphism.

Emerging depression is associated with face memory deficits in adolescent girls.

PubMed

Guyer, Amanda E; Choate, Victoria R; Grimm, Kevin J; Pine, Daniel S; Keenan, Kate

2011-02-01

To examine the association between memory for previously encoded emotional faces and depression symptoms assessed over 4 years in adolescent girls. Investigating the interface between memory deficits and depression in adolescent girls may provide clues about depression pathophysiology. Participants were 213 girls recruited from a longitudinal, community-based study; the majority were African American. Scores on depressive screening measures at age 8 were used to increase the base rate of depression. Depression symptoms and diagnoses were assessed annually for 4 years. In year 4, when the girls were 12 to 13 years old, a face emotion encoding task was administered during which ratings were generated in response to sad, fearful, angry, and happy faces. A surprise memory task followed whereby participants identified which of two faces, displaying neutral expressions, they had seen previously. Girls with higher depression symptom levels from ages 9 to 12 years evidenced lower accuracy in identifying previously encoded emotional faces. Controlling for IQ, higher depression symptom level was associated with a memory deficit specific to previously encoded sad and happy faces. These effects were not moderated by race. Individual differences in face memory deficits relate to individual differences in emerging, early adolescent depression, and may be vulnerability markers for depression. Copyright © 2011 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion.

PubMed

S Cortes, Diana; Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

2017-01-01

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection ("remember" hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.

Memory for faces and voices varies as a function of sex and expressed emotion

PubMed Central

Laukka, Petri; Lindahl, Christina; Fischer, Håkan

2017-01-01

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy. PMID:28570691

Anterior temporal face patches: a meta-analysis and empirical study

PubMed Central

Von Der Heide, Rebecca J.; Skipper, Laura M.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2013-01-01

Evidence suggests the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays an important role in person identification and memory. In humans, neuroimaging studies of person memory report consistent activations in the ATL to famous and personally familiar faces and studies of patients report resection or damage of the ATL causes an associative prosopagnosia in which face perception is intact but face memory is compromised. In addition, high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates and electrophysiological studies of humans also suggest regions of the ventral ATL are sensitive to novel faces. The current study extends previous findings by investigating whether similar subregions in the dorsal, ventral, lateral, or polar aspects of the ATL are sensitive to personally familiar, famous, and novel faces. We present the results of two studies of person memory: a meta-analysis of existing fMRI studies and an empirical fMRI study using optimized imaging parameters. Both studies showed left-lateralized ATL activations to familiar individuals while novel faces activated the right ATL. Activations to famous faces were quite ventral, similar to what has been reported in previous high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates. These findings suggest that face memory-sensitive patches in the human ATL are in the ventral/polar ATL. PMID:23378834

Neural mechanisms underlying the effects of face-based affective signals on memory for faces: a tentative model

PubMed Central

Tsukiura, Takashi

2012-01-01

In our daily lives, we form some impressions of other people. Although those impressions are affected by many factors, face-based affective signals such as facial expression, facial attractiveness, or trustworthiness are important. Previous psychological studies have demonstrated the impact of facial impressions on remembering other people, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this psychological process. The purpose of this article is to review recent functional MRI (fMRI) studies to investigate the effects of face-based affective signals including facial expression, facial attractiveness, and trustworthiness on memory for faces, and to propose a tentative concept for understanding this affective-cognitive interaction. On the basis of the aforementioned research, three brain regions are potentially involved in the processing of face-based affective signals. The first candidate is the amygdala, where activity is generally modulated by both affectively positive and negative signals from faces. Activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), as the second candidate, increases as a function of perceived positive signals from faces; whereas activity in the insular cortex, as the third candidate, reflects a function of face-based negative signals. In addition, neuroscientific studies have reported that the three regions are functionally connected to the memory-related hippocampal regions. These findings suggest that the effects of face-based affective signals on memory for faces could be modulated by interactions between the regions associated with the processing of face-based affective signals and the hippocampus as a memory-related region. PMID:22837740

ADRA2B genotype modulates effects of acute psychosocial stress on emotional memory retrieval in healthy young men.

PubMed

Li, Shijia; Weerda, Riklef; Guenzel, Friederike; Wolf, Oliver T; Thiel, Christiane M

2013-07-01

Previous studies have shown that acute psychosocial stress impairs retrieval of declarative memory with emotional material being especially sensitive to this effect. A functional deletion variant of the ADRA2B gene encoding the α2B-adrenergic receptor has been shown to increase emotional memory and neural activity in the amygdala. We investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress and the ADRA2B allele on recognition memory for emotional and neutral faces. Fourty-two healthy, non-smoker male volunteers (30 deletion carriers, 12 noncarriers) were tested with a face recognition paradigm. During encoding they were presented with emotional and neutral faces. One hour later, participants underwent either a stress ("Trier Social Stress Test (TSST)") or a control procedure which was followed immediately by the retrieval session where subjects had to indicate whether the presented face was old or new. Stress increased salivary cortisol concentrations, blood pressure and pulse and impaired recognition memory for faces independent of emotional valence and genotype. Participants showed generally slower reaction times to emotional faces. Carriers of the ADRA2B functional deletion variant showed an impaired recognition and slower retrieval of neutral faces under stress. Further, they were significantly slower in retrieving fearful faces in the control condition. The findings indicate that a genetic variation of the noradrenergic system may preserve emotional faces from stress-induced memory impairments seen for neutral faces and heighten reactivity to emotional stimuli under control conditions. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ERP Correlates of Target-Distracter Differentiation in Repeated Runs of a Continuous Recognition Task with Emotional and Neutral Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Treese, Anne-Cecile; Johansson, Mikael; Lindgren, Magnus

2010-01-01

The emotional salience of faces has previously been shown to induce memory distortions in recognition memory tasks. This event-related potential (ERP) study used repeated runs of a continuous recognition task with emotional and neutral faces to investigate emotion-induced memory distortions. In the second and third runs, participants made more…

Face Memory and Object Recognition in Children with High-Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome and in Their Parents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuusikko-Gauffin, Sanna; Jansson-Verkasalo, Eira; Carter, Alice; Pollock-Wurman, Rachel; Jussila, Katja; Mattila, Marja-Leena; Rahko, Jukka; Ebeling, Hanna; Pauls, David; Moilanen, Irma

2011-01-01

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have reported to have impairments in face, recognition and face memory, but intact object recognition and object memory. Potential abnormalities, in these fields at the family level of high-functioning children with ASD remains understudied despite, the ever-mounting evidence that ASDs are genetic and…

Emotional contexts modulate intentional memory suppression of neutral faces: Insights from ERPs.

PubMed

Pierguidi, Lapo; Righi, Stefania; Gronchi, Giorgio; Marzi, Tessa; Caharel, Stephanie; Giovannelli, Fabio; Viggiano, Maria Pia

2016-08-01

The main goal of present work is to gain new insight into the temporal dynamics underlying the voluntary memory control for neutral faces associated with neutral, positive and negative contexts. A directed forgetting (DF) procedure was used during the recording of EEG to answer the question whether is it possible to forget a face that has been encoded within a particular emotional context. A face-scene phase in which a neutral face was showed in a neutral or emotional scene (positive, negative) was followed by the voluntary memory cue (cue phase) indicating whether the face had to-be remember or to-be-forgotten (TBR and TBF). Memory for faces was then assessed with an old/new recognition task. Behaviorally, we found that it is harder to suppress faces-in-positive-scenes compared to faces-in-negative and neutral-scenes. The temporal information obtained by the ERPs showed: 1) during the face-scene phase, the Late Positive Potential (LPP), which indexes motivated emotional attention, was larger for faces-in-negative-scenes compared to faces-in-neutral-scenes. 2) Remarkably, during the cue phase, ERPs were significantly modulated by the emotional contexts. Faces-in-neutral scenes showed an ERP pattern that has been typically associated to DF effect whereas faces-in-positive-scenes elicited the reverse ERP pattern. Faces-in-negative scenes did not show differences in the DF-related neural activities but larger N1 amplitude for TBF vs. TBR faces may index early attentional deployment. These results support the hypothesis that the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the contexts (through attentional broadening and narrowing mechanisms, respectively) may modulate the effectiveness of intentional memory suppression for neutral information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Why Some Faces won't be Remembered: Brain Potentials Illuminate Successful Versus Unsuccessful Encoding for Same-Race and Other-Race Faces

PubMed Central

Lucas, Heather D.; Chiao, Joan Y.; Paller, Ken A.

2011-01-01

Memory is often less accurate for faces from another racial group than for faces from one's own racial group. The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are a topic of active debate. Contemporary theories invoke factors such as inferior expertise with faces from other racial groups and an encoding emphasis on race-specifying information. We investigated neural mechanisms of this memory bias by recording event-related potentials while participants attempted to memorize same-race (SR) and other-race (OR) faces. Brain potentials at encoding were compared as a function of successful versus unsuccessful recognition on a subsequent-memory test. Late positive amplitudes predicted subsequent memory for SR faces and, to a lesser extent, for OR faces. By contrast, the amplitudes of earlier frontocentral N200 potentials and occipito-temporal P2 potentials were larger for later-remembered relative to later-forgotten OR faces. Furthermore, N200 and P2 amplitudes were larger for OR faces with features considered atypical of that race relative to faces that were race-stereotypical (according to a consensus from a large group of other participants). In keeping with previous reports, we infer that these earlier potentials index the processing of unique or individuating facial information, which is key to remembering a face. Individuation may tend to be uniformly high for SR faces but lower and less reliable for OR faces. Individuation may also be more readily applied for OR faces that appear less stereotypical. These electrophysiological measures thus provide novel evidence that poorer memory for OR faces stems from encoding that is inadequate because it fails to emphasize individuating information. PMID:21441983

Face recognition by applying wavelet subband representation and kernel associative memory.

PubMed

Zhang, Bai-Ling; Zhang, Haihong; Ge, Shuzhi Sam

2004-01-01

In this paper, we propose an efficient face recognition scheme which has two features: 1) representation of face images by two-dimensional (2-D) wavelet subband coefficients and 2) recognition by a modular, personalised classification method based on kernel associative memory models. Compared to PCA projections and low resolution "thumb-nail" image representations, wavelet subband coefficients can efficiently capture substantial facial features while keeping computational complexity low. As there are usually very limited samples, we constructed an associative memory (AM) model for each person and proposed to improve the performance of AM models by kernel methods. Specifically, we first applied kernel transforms to each possible training pair of faces sample and then mapped the high-dimensional feature space back to input space. Our scheme using modular autoassociative memory for face recognition is inspired by the same motivation as using autoencoders for optical character recognition (OCR), for which the advantages has been proven. By associative memory, all the prototypical faces of one particular person are used to reconstruct themselves and the reconstruction error for a probe face image is used to decide if the probe face is from the corresponding person. We carried out extensive experiments on three standard face recognition datasets, the FERET data, the XM2VTS data, and the ORL data. Detailed comparisons with earlier published results are provided and our proposed scheme offers better recognition accuracy on all of the face datasets.

Own-sex effects in emotional memory for faces.

PubMed

Armony, Jorge L; Sergerie, Karine

2007-10-09

The amygdala is known to be critical for the enhancement of memory for emotional, especially negative, material. Importantly, some researchers have suggested a sex-specific hemispheric lateralization in this process. In the case of facial expressions, another important factor that could influence memory success is the sex of the face, which could interact with the emotion depicted as well as with the sex of the perceiver. Whether this is the case remains unknown, as all previous studies of sex difference in emotional memory have employed affective pictures. Here we directly explored this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a subsequent memory paradigm for facial expressions (fearful, happy and neutral). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that the hemispheric laterality of the amygdala involvement in successful memory for emotional material was influenced not only by the sex of the subjects, as previously proposed, but also by the sex of the faces being remembered. Namely, the left amygdala was more active for successfully remembered female fearful faces in women, whereas in men the right amygdala was more involved in memory for male fearful faces. These results confirm the existence of sex differences in amygdala lateralization in emotional memory but also demonstrate a subtle relationship between the observer and the stimulus in this process.

Enhanced Visual Short-Term Memory for Angry Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Margaret C.; Wu, Chia-Yun; Linden, David E. J.; Raymond, Jane E.

2009-01-01

Although some views of face perception posit independent processing of face identity and expression, recent studies suggest interactive processing of these 2 domains. The authors examined expression-identity interactions in visual short-term memory (VSTM) by assessing recognition performance in a VSTM task in which face identity was relevant and…

Tracking the truth: the effect of face familiarity on eye fixations during deception.

PubMed

Millen, Ailsa E; Hope, Lorraine; Hillstrom, Anne P; Vrij, Aldert

2017-05-01

In forensic investigations, suspects sometimes conceal recognition of a familiar person to protect co-conspirators or hide knowledge of a victim. The current experiment sought to determine whether eye fixations could be used to identify memory of known persons when lying about recognition of faces. Participants' eye movements were monitored whilst they lied and told the truth about recognition of faces that varied in familiarity (newly learned, famous celebrities, personally known). Memory detection by eye movements during recognition of personally familiar and famous celebrity faces was negligibly affected by lying, thereby demonstrating that detection of memory during lies is influenced by the prior learning of the face. By contrast, eye movements did not reveal lies robustly for newly learned faces. These findings support the use of eye movements as markers of memory during concealed recognition but also suggest caution when familiarity is only a consequence of one brief exposure.

When are Overcomplete Representations Identifiable? Uniqueness of Tensor Decompositions Under Expansion Constraints

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-16

Science Dept., University of California, Irvine, USA 92697. Email : a.anandkumar@uci.edu,mjanzami@uci.edu. Daniel Hsu and Sham Kakade are with...Microsoft Research New England, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142. Email : dahsu@microsoft.com, skakade@microsoft.com 1 a latent space dimensionality...Sparse coding for multitask and transfer learning. ArxXiv preprint, abs/1209.0738, 2012. [34] G.H. Golub and C.F. Van Loan. Matrix Computations. The

Structures and Functions of Selective Attention.

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-07-20

phonological and semantic representations in memory ( LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Marcel, 1983; Posner, 1978). The advantage of an integrated word, even in...0014-86-0289 and by the McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function. I am grateful to Drs. Mary K. Rothbart, Steven E. Petersen and Jennifer Sandson...benefit of cost and benefit. Psychology Bulletin, 1984, 96, 29-44. Kosslyn, S.M. (1980) Image and Mind. Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA. LaBerge , D.L

On the Learning of Distractors during Controlled and Automatic Processing.

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-02-04

function of semantic, graphic and syntactic orienting tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1973, 12, 471-480. LaBerge , D. Attention...and the measurement of perceptual learning. Memory and Cognition, 1973, 1, 268-278. LaBerge , D. Acquisition of automatic processing in perceptual and...Univ A. Stevens , Holt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge, 1A D. Stone, SUY, Albany P. Suppes, Stanford Uuiv H. Swaminathan, Univ of Massachusetts K. Tatsuoka

Learning Shape Descriptions: Generating and Generalizing Models of Visual Objects.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-09-01

Minsky , Marvin and Seymour Papert, [1969], Perceptrons, MIT Press, Cam- bridge, Ma. Mitchell, T. M., [1978], "Version spaces: A candidiate elimination...with respect to a suitable set of affine transformations. This is one area in which classic perceptrons fall short [ Minsky and Papert 19691. The third...Quillian, M. Ross, [1968], "Semantic Memory" (PhD Thesis), in Semantic Infor- mation Processing, M. Minsky (ed.), MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Schlesinger, G

Attention and memory bias to facial emotions underlying negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

PubMed

Jang, Seon-Kyeong; Park, Seon-Cheol; Lee, Seung-Hwan; Cho, Yang Seok; Choi, Kee-Hong

2016-01-01

This study assessed bias in selective attention to facial emotions in negative symptoms of schizophrenia and its influence on subsequent memory for facial emotions. Thirty people with schizophrenia who had high and low levels of negative symptoms (n = 15, respectively) and 21 healthy controls completed a visual probe detection task investigating selective attention bias (happy, sad, and angry faces randomly presented for 50, 500, or 1000 ms). A yes/no incidental facial memory task was then completed. Attention bias scores and recognition errors were calculated. Those with high negative symptoms exhibited reduced attention to emotional faces relative to neutral faces; those with low negative symptoms showed the opposite pattern when faces were presented for 500 ms regardless of the valence. Compared to healthy controls, those with high negative symptoms made more errors for happy faces in the memory task. Reduced attention to emotional faces in the probe detection task was significantly associated with less pleasure and motivation and more recognition errors for happy faces in schizophrenia group only. Attention bias away from emotional information relatively early in the attentional process and associated diminished positive memory may relate to pathological mechanisms for negative symptoms.

Individual Differences in Holistic Processing Predict the Own-Race Advantage in Recognition Memory

PubMed Central

DeGutis, Joseph; Mercado, Rogelio J.; Wilmer, Jeremy; Rosenblatt, Andrew

2013-01-01

Individuals are consistently better at recognizing own-race faces compared to other-race faces (other-race effect, ORE). One popular hypothesis is that this recognition memory ORE is caused by differential own- and other-race holistic processing, the simultaneous integration of part and configural face information into a coherent whole. Holistic processing may create a more rich, detailed memory representation of own-race faces compared to other-race faces. Despite several studies showing that own-race faces are processed more holistically than other-race faces, studies have yet to link the holistic processing ORE and the recognition memory ORE. In the current study, we sought to use a more valid method of analyzing individual differences in holistic processing by using regression to statistically remove the influence of the control condition (part trials in the part-whole task) from the condition of interest (whole trials in the part-whole task). We also employed regression to separately examine the two components of the ORE: own-race advantage (regressing other-race from own-race performance) and other-race decrement (regressing own-race from other-race performance). First, we demonstrated that own-race faces were processed more holistically than other-race faces, particularly the eye region. Notably, using regression, we showed a significant association between the own-race advantage in recognition memory and the own-race advantage in holistic processing and that these associations were weaker when examining the other-race decrement. We also demonstrated that performance on own- and other-race faces across all of our tasks was highly correlated, suggesting that the differences we found between own- and other-race faces are quantitative rather than qualitative. Together, this suggests that own- and other-race faces recruit largely similar mechanisms, that own-race faces more thoroughly engage holistic processing, and that this greater engagement of holistic processing is significantly associated with the own-race advantage in recognition memory. PMID:23593119

Individual differences in holistic processing predict the own-race advantage in recognition memory.

PubMed

Degutis, Joseph; Mercado, Rogelio J; Wilmer, Jeremy; Rosenblatt, Andrew

2013-01-01

Individuals are consistently better at recognizing own-race faces compared to other-race faces (other-race effect, ORE). One popular hypothesis is that this recognition memory ORE is caused by differential own- and other-race holistic processing, the simultaneous integration of part and configural face information into a coherent whole. Holistic processing may create a more rich, detailed memory representation of own-race faces compared to other-race faces. Despite several studies showing that own-race faces are processed more holistically than other-race faces, studies have yet to link the holistic processing ORE and the recognition memory ORE. In the current study, we sought to use a more valid method of analyzing individual differences in holistic processing by using regression to statistically remove the influence of the control condition (part trials in the part-whole task) from the condition of interest (whole trials in the part-whole task). We also employed regression to separately examine the two components of the ORE: own-race advantage (regressing other-race from own-race performance) and other-race decrement (regressing own-race from other-race performance). First, we demonstrated that own-race faces were processed more holistically than other-race faces, particularly the eye region. Notably, using regression, we showed a significant association between the own-race advantage in recognition memory and the own-race advantage in holistic processing and that these associations were weaker when examining the other-race decrement. We also demonstrated that performance on own- and other-race faces across all of our tasks was highly correlated, suggesting that the differences we found between own- and other-race faces are quantitative rather than qualitative. Together, this suggests that own- and other-race faces recruit largely similar mechanisms, that own-race faces more thoroughly engage holistic processing, and that this greater engagement of holistic processing is significantly associated with the own-race advantage in recognition memory.

Developing professional identity in nursing academics: the role of communities of practice.

PubMed

Andrew, Nicola; Ferguson, Dorothy; Wilkie, George; Corcoran, Terry; Simpson, Liz

2009-08-01

This paper analyses the current standing of nursing within the wider United Kingdom (UK) higher education (HE) environment and considers the development of academic identity within the sector, introducing a technology mediated approach to professional learning and development. A community of practice (CoP) is a way of learning based on collaboration among peers. Individuals come together virtually or physically, with a common purpose, defined by knowledge rather than task [Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, sixth ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge]. In 2008, a small team of academics at Glasgow Caledonian University, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Community Health created and implemented iCoP, a project undertaken to pilot an international CoP, where novices and expert academics collaborated to debate and discuss the complex transition from clinician to academic. Although not intended as a conventional research project, the developmental journey and emerging online discussion provide an insight into the collective thoughts and opinions of a multi-national group of novice academics. The article also highlights the key challenges, problems and limitations of working in an international online arena with professionals who traditionally work and thrive in a face to face, real time environment.

Impaired face recognition is associated with social inhibition

PubMed Central

Avery, Suzanne N; VanDerKlok, Ross M; Heckers, Stephan; Blackford, Jennifer U

2016-01-01

Face recognition is fundamental to successful social interaction. Individuals with deficits in face recognition are likely to have social functioning impairments that may lead to heightened risk for social anxiety. A critical component of social interaction is how quickly a face is learned during initial exposure to a new individual. Here, we used a novel Repeated Faces task to assess how quickly memory for faces is established. Face recognition was measured over multiple exposures in 52 young adults ranging from low to high in social inhibition, a core dimension of social anxiety. High social inhibition was associated with a smaller slope of change in recognition memory over repeated face exposure, indicating participants with higher social inhibition showed smaller improvements in recognition memory after seeing faces multiple times. We propose that impaired face learning is an important mechanism underlying social inhibition and may contribute to, or maintain, social anxiety. PMID:26776300

Impaired face recognition is associated with social inhibition.

PubMed

Avery, Suzanne N; VanDerKlok, Ross M; Heckers, Stephan; Blackford, Jennifer U

2016-02-28

Face recognition is fundamental to successful social interaction. Individuals with deficits in face recognition are likely to have social functioning impairments that may lead to heightened risk for social anxiety. A critical component of social interaction is how quickly a face is learned during initial exposure to a new individual. Here, we used a novel Repeated Faces task to assess how quickly memory for faces is established. Face recognition was measured over multiple exposures in 52 young adults ranging from low to high in social inhibition, a core dimension of social anxiety. High social inhibition was associated with a smaller slope of change in recognition memory over repeated face exposure, indicating participants with higher social inhibition showed smaller improvements in recognition memory after seeing faces multiple times. We propose that impaired face learning is an important mechanism underlying social inhibition and may contribute to, or maintain, social anxiety. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional face expression modulates occipital-frontal effective connectivity during memory formation in a bottom-up fashion.

PubMed

Xiu, Daiming; Geiger, Maximilian J; Klaver, Peter

2015-01-01

This study investigated the role of bottom-up and top-down neural mechanisms in the processing of emotional face expression during memory formation. Functional brain imaging data was acquired during incidental learning of positive ("happy"), neutral and negative ("angry" or "fearful") faces. Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) was applied on the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to characterize effective connectivity within a brain network involving face perception (inferior occipital gyrus and fusiform gyrus) and successful memory formation related areas (hippocampus, superior parietal lobule, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex). The bottom-up models assumed processing of emotional face expression along feed forward pathways to the orbitofrontal cortex. The top-down models assumed that the orbitofrontal cortex processed emotional valence and mediated connections to the hippocampus. A subsequent recognition memory test showed an effect of negative emotion on the response bias, but not on memory performance. Our DCM findings showed that the bottom-up model family of effective connectivity best explained the data across all subjects and specified that emotion affected most bottom-up connections to the orbitofrontal cortex, especially from the occipital visual cortex and superior parietal lobule. Of those pathways to the orbitofrontal cortex the connection from the inferior occipital gyrus correlated with memory performance independently of valence. We suggest that bottom-up neural mechanisms support effects of emotional face expression and memory formation in a parallel and partially overlapping fashion.

Never forget a name: white matter connectivity predicts person memory

PubMed Central

Metoki, Athanasia; Alm, Kylie H.; Wang, Yin; Ngo, Chi T.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2018-01-01

Through learning and practice, we can acquire numerous skills, ranging from the simple (whistling) to the complex (memorizing operettas in a foreign language). It has been proposed that complex learning requires a network of brain regions that interact with one another via white matter pathways. One candidate white matter pathway, the uncinate fasciculus (UF), has exhibited mixed results for this hypothesis: some studies have shown UF involvement across a range of memory tasks, while other studies report null results. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the UF supports associative memory processes and that this tract can be parcellated into subtracts that support specific types of memory. Healthy young adults performed behavioral tasks (two face-name learning tasks, one word pair memory task) and underwent a diffusion-weighted imaging scan. Our results revealed that variation in UF microstructure was significantly associated with individual differences in performance on both face-name tasks, as well as the word association memory task. A UF sub-tract, functionally defined by its connectivity between face-selective regions in the anterior temporal lobe and orbitofrontal cortex, selectively predicted face-name learning. In contrast, connectivity between the fusiform face patch and both anterior face patches had no predictive validity. These findings suggest that there is a robust and replicable relationship between the UF and associative learning and memory. Moreover, this large white matter pathway can be subdivided to reveal discrete functional profiles. PMID:28646241

Visual imagery of famous faces: effects of memory and attention revealed by fMRI.

PubMed

Ishai, Alumit; Haxby, James V; Ungerleider, Leslie G

2002-12-01

Complex pictorial information can be represented and retrieved from memory as mental visual images. Functional brain imaging studies have shown that visual perception and visual imagery share common neural substrates. The type of memory (short- or long-term) that mediates the generation of mental images, however, has not been addressed previously. The purpose of this study was to investigate the neural correlates underlying imagery generated from short- and long-term memory (STM and LTM). We used famous faces to localize the visual response during perception and to compare the responses during visual imagery generated from STM (subjects memorized specific pictures of celebrities before the imagery task) and imagery from LTM (subjects imagined famous faces without seeing specific pictures during the experimental session). We found that visual perception of famous faces activated the inferior occipital gyri, lateral fusiform gyri, the superior temporal sulcus, and the amygdala. Small subsets of these face-selective regions were activated during imagery. Additionally, visual imagery of famous faces activated a network of regions composed of bilateral calcarine, hippocampus, precuneus, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). In all these regions, imagery generated from STM evoked more activation than imagery from LTM. Regardless of memory type, focusing attention on features of the imagined faces (e.g., eyes, lips, or nose) resulted in increased activation in the right IPS and right IFG. Our results suggest differential effects of memory and attention during the generation and maintenance of mental images of faces.

ZED- A LINE EDITOR FOR THE DEC VAX

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Scott, P. J.

1994-01-01

The ZED editor for the DEC VAX is a simple, yet powerful line editor for text, program source code, and non-binary data. Line editors can be superior to screen editors in some cases, such as executing complex multiple or conditional commands, or editing via slow modem lines. ZED excels in the area of text processing by using procedure files. For example, such procedures can reformat a file of addresses or remove all comment lines from a FORTRAN program. In addition to command files, ZED also features versatile search qualifiers, global changes, conditionals, on-line help, hexadecimal mode, space compression, looping, logical combinations of search strings, journaling, visible control characters, and automatic detabbing. The ZED editor was originally developed at Cambridge University in London and has been continuously enhanced since 1976. Users of the Cambridge implementation have devised such elaborate ZED procedures as chess games, calculators, and programs for evaluating Pi. This implementation of ZED strives to maintain the characteristics of the Cambridge editor. A complete ZED manual is included on the tape. ZED is written entirely in C for either batch or interactive execution on the DEC VAX under VMS 4.X and requires 80,896 bytes of memory. This program was released in 1988 and updated in 1989.

Cognitive task performance and frequency of alcohol usage in young adults.

PubMed

Harvanko, Arit M; Odlaug, Brian L; Schreiber, Liana R N; Grant, Jon E

2012-06-01

The goal of our study was to examine cognitive effects of alcohol in young adults at varied levels of alcohol usage using well-validated computerized cognitive measures. One hundred fifty-five young adults (mean age: 21.15 ± 3.092 years; 25.8% female), free from non-alcohol-related psychiatric diagnoses and drug use, underwent selected tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery in conjunction with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale, Eysenck Impulsivity Questionnaire, and the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. Study participants were grouped according to alcohol frequency: nondrinkers, at-risk drinkers (subsyndromal alcohol usage), and alcohol use disorder. At-risk drinkers and individuals with alcohol use disorders bet significantly more overall on the Cambridge Gambling Task than nondrinkers. There were no significant differences noted between groups on the Spatial Working Memory task or Intra-dimensional/Extra-dimensional Set Shift task. Individuals with alcohol use disorders endorsed higher impulsivity than at-risk and nondrinkers on the Barratt Impulsivity Scale and Eysenck Impulsivity Questionnaire. Individuals with alcohol use disorders and at-risk drinkers also endorsed higher venturesomeness than nondrinkers on the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. Results from the Cambridge Gambling Task suggest that even at a subsyndromal level, young adults make risky decisions that mirror those seen in individuals with alcohol use disorders.

Examining the relationship between face processing and social interaction behavior in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show impairment in reciprocal social communication, which includes deficits in social cognition and behavior. Since social cognition and social behavior are considered to be interdependent, it is valuable to examine social processes on multiple levels of analysis. Neuropsychological measures of face processing often reveal deficits in social cognition in ASD including the ability to identify and remember facial information. However, the extent to which neuropsychological measures are associated with or predictive of real-world social behavior is unclear. Methods The study investigated 66 children (ASD 34, typically developing (TD) 32) using neuropsychological measures of face processing (identity, affect, and memory). Children also participated in a peer interaction paradigm, which allowed observation and coding of natural social interaction behaviors during play with peers (e.g., Self-Play, Cooperative Play, Verbal Bout). ANCOVA, regression, and correlation models analyzed between-group differences, the ability of neuropsychological measures to predict social behavior, and the strength of the associations. Results Between-group differences were shown on Memory for Faces Delayed and the peer interaction variables Self-Play and Verbal Bout. Regression models indicated that Memory for Faces Delayed predicted the amount of Self-Play, Equipment use alone, and Cooperative Play with peers on the playground. Autism symptomology only predicted verbal exchange with peers. Conclusions Face memory strongly predicts relevant social engagement patterns in both children with and without ASD. Impairment in facial memory is associated with reduced ‘real-world’ social interaction and more self-play, whereas higher performance in face memory predicts more cooperative play. Results highlight the strong connection between face memory and reciprocal social interaction, suggesting that improvement in one may benefit the other. PMID:25180050

Forgetting the Once-Seen Face: Estimating the Strength of an Eyewitness's Memory Representation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deffenbacher, Kenneth A.; Bornstein, Brian H.; McGorty, E. Kiernan; Penrod, Steven D.

2008-01-01

The fidelity of an eyewitness's memory representation is an issue of paramount forensic concern. Psychological science has been unable to offer more than vague generalities concerning the relation of retention interval to memory trace strength for the once-seen face. A meta-analysis of 53 facial memory studies produced a highly reliable…

Essentialist Thinking Predicts Decrements in Children's Memory for Racially Ambiguous Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaither, Sarah E.; Schultz, Jennifer R.; Pauker, Kristin; Sommers, Samuel R.; Maddox, Keith B.; Ambady, Nalini

2014-01-01

Past research shows that adults often display poor memory for racially ambiguous and racial outgroup faces, with both face types remembered worse than own-race faces. In the present study, the authors examined whether children also show this pattern of results. They also examined whether emerging essentialist thinking about race predicts…

Selective Interference on the Holistic Processing of Faces in Working Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Olivia S.; Gauthier, Isabel

2010-01-01

Faces and objects of expertise compete for early perceptual processes and holistic processing resources (Gauthier, Curran, Curby, & Collins, 2003). Here, we examined the nature of interference on holistic face processing in working memory by comparing how various types of loads affect selective attention to parts of face composites. In dual…

Firm size diversity, functional richness, and resilience

USGS Publications Warehouse

Garmestani, A.S.; Allen, Craig R.; Mittelstaedt, J.D.; Stow, C.A.; Ward, W.A.

2006-01-01

This paper applies recent advances in ecology to our understanding of firm development, sustainability, and economic development. The ecological literature indicates that the greater the functional richness of species in a system, the greater its resilience - that is, its ability to persist in the face of substantial changes in the environment. This paper focuses on the effects of functional richness across firm size on the ability of industries to survive in the face of economic change. Our results indicate that industries with a richness of industrial functions are more resilient to employment volatility. ?? 2006 Cambridge University Press.

Minimizing Skin Color Differences Does Not Eliminate the Own-Race Recognition Advantage in Infants

PubMed Central

Anzures, Gizelle; Pascalis, Olivier; Quinn, Paul C.; Slater, Alan M.; Lee, Kang

2011-01-01

An abundance of experience with own-race faces and limited to no experience with other-race faces has been associated with better recognition memory for own-race faces in infants, children, and adults. This study investigated the developmental origins of this other-race effect (ORE) by examining the role of a salient perceptual property of faces—that of skin color. Six- and 9-month-olds’ recognition memory for own- and other-race faces was examined using infant-controlled habituation and visual-paired comparison at test. Infants were shown own- or other-race faces in color or with skin color cues minimized in grayscale images. Results for the color stimuli replicated previous findings that infants show an ORE in face recognition memory. Results for the grayscale stimuli showed that even when a salient perceptual cue to race, such as skin color information, is minimized, 6- to 9-month-olds, nonetheless, show an ORE in their face recognition memory. Infants’ use of shape-based and configural cues for face recognition is discussed. PMID:22039335

Inactivation of Primate Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Auditory and Audiovisual Working Memory.

PubMed

Plakke, Bethany; Hwang, Jaewon; Romanski, Lizabeth M

2015-07-01

The prefrontal cortex is associated with cognitive functions that include planning, reasoning, decision-making, working memory, and communication. Neurophysiology and neuropsychology studies have established that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is essential in spatial working memory while the ventral frontal lobe processes language and communication signals. Single-unit recordings in nonhuman primates has shown that ventral prefrontal (VLPFC) neurons integrate face and vocal information and are active during audiovisual working memory. However, whether VLPFC is essential in remembering face and voice information is unknown. We therefore trained nonhuman primates in an audiovisual working memory paradigm using naturalistic face-vocalization movies as memoranda. We inactivated VLPFC, with reversible cortical cooling, and examined performance when faces, vocalizations or both faces and vocalization had to be remembered. We found that VLPFC inactivation impaired subjects' performance in audiovisual and auditory-alone versions of the task. In contrast, VLPFC inactivation did not disrupt visual working memory. Our studies demonstrate the importance of VLPFC in auditory and audiovisual working memory for social stimuli but suggest a different role for VLPFC in unimodal visual processing. The ventral frontal lobe, or inferior frontal gyrus, plays an important role in audiovisual communication in the human brain. Studies with nonhuman primates have found that neurons within ventral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) encode both faces and vocalizations and that VLPFC is active when animals need to remember these social stimuli. In the present study, we temporarily inactivated VLPFC by cooling the cortex while nonhuman primates performed a working memory task. This impaired the ability of subjects to remember a face and vocalization pair or just the vocalization alone. Our work highlights the importance of the primate VLPFC in the processing of faces and vocalizations in a manner that is similar to the inferior frontal gyrus in the human brain. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/359666-10$15.00/0.

Recognition and context memory for faces from own and other ethnic groups: a remember-know investigation.

PubMed

Horry, Ruth; Wright, Daniel B; Tredoux, Colin G

2010-03-01

People are more accurate at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group than at recognizing faces from other ethnic groups. This other-ethnicity effect (OEE) in recognition may be produced by a deficit in recollective memory for other-ethnicity faces. In a single study, White and Black participants saw White and Black faces presented within several different visual contexts. The participants were then given an old/new recognition task. Old responses were followed by remember-know-guess judgments and context judgments. Own-ethnicity faces were recognized more accurately, were given more remember responses, and produced more accurate context judgments than did other-ethnicity faces. These results are discussed in a dual-process framework, and implications for eyewitness memory are considered.

The effect of background music on episodic memory and autonomic responses: listening to emotionally touching music enhances facial memory capacity.

PubMed

Proverbio, Alice Mado; Mado Proverbio, C A Alice; Lozano Nasi, Valentina; Alessandra Arcari, Laura; De Benedetto, Francesco; Guardamagna, Matteo; Gazzola, Martina; Zani, Alberto

2015-10-15

The aim of this study was to investigate how background auditory processing can affect other perceptual and cognitive processes as a function of stimulus content, style and emotional nature. Previous studies have offered contrasting evidence, and it has been recently shown that listening to music negatively affected concurrent mental processing in the elderly but not in young adults. To further investigate this matter, the effect of listening to music vs. listening to the sound of rain or silence was examined by administering an old/new face memory task (involving 448 unknown faces) to a group of 54 non-musician university students. Heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure were measured during an explicit face study session that was followed by a memory test. The results indicated that more efficient and faster recall of faces occurred under conditions of silence or when participants were listening to emotionally touching music. Whereas auditory background (e.g., rain or joyful music) interfered with memory encoding, listening to emotionally touching music improved memory and significantly increased heart rate. It is hypothesized that touching music is able to modify the visual perception of faces by binding facial properties with auditory and emotionally charged information (music), which may therefore result in deeper memory encoding.

The effect of background music on episodic memory and autonomic responses: listening to emotionally touching music enhances facial memory capacity

PubMed Central

Mado Proverbio, C.A. Alice; Lozano Nasi, Valentina; Alessandra Arcari, Laura; De Benedetto, Francesco; Guardamagna, Matteo; Gazzola, Martina; Zani, Alberto

2015-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate how background auditory processing can affect other perceptual and cognitive processes as a function of stimulus content, style and emotional nature. Previous studies have offered contrasting evidence, and it has been recently shown that listening to music negatively affected concurrent mental processing in the elderly but not in young adults. To further investigate this matter, the effect of listening to music vs. listening to the sound of rain or silence was examined by administering an old/new face memory task (involving 448 unknown faces) to a group of 54 non-musician university students. Heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure were measured during an explicit face study session that was followed by a memory test. The results indicated that more efficient and faster recall of faces occurred under conditions of silence or when participants were listening to emotionally touching music. Whereas auditory background (e.g., rain or joyful music) interfered with memory encoding, listening to emotionally touching music improved memory and significantly increased heart rate. It is hypothesized that touching music is able to modify the visual perception of faces by binding facial properties with auditory and emotionally charged information (music), which may therefore result in deeper memory encoding. PMID:26469712

Neural Conflict–Control Mechanisms Improve Memory for Target Stimuli

PubMed Central

Krebs, Ruth M.; Boehler, Carsten N.; De Belder, Maya; Egner, Tobias

2015-01-01

According to conflict-monitoring models, conflict serves as an internal signal for reinforcing top-down attention to task-relevant information. While evidence based on measures of ongoing task performance supports this idea, implications for long-term consequences, that is, memory, have not been tested yet. Here, we evaluated the prediction that conflict-triggered attentional enhancement of target-stimulus processing should be associated with superior subsequent memory for those stimuli. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a novel variant of a face-word Stroop task that employed trial-unique face stimuli as targets, we were able to assess subsequent (incidental) memory for target faces as a function of whether a given face had previously been accompanied by congruent, neutral, or incongruent (conflicting) distracters. In line with our predictions, incongruent distracters not only induced behavioral conflict, but also gave rise to enhanced memory for target faces. Moreover, conflict-triggered neural activity in prefrontal and parietal regions was predictive of subsequent retrieval success, and displayed conflict-enhanced functional coupling with medial-temporal lobe regions. These data provide support for the proposal that conflict evokes enhanced top-down attention to task-relevant stimuli, thereby promoting their encoding into long-term memory. Our findings thus delineate the neural mechanisms of a novel link between cognitive control and memory. PMID:24108799

Socio-sexuality and episodic memory function in women: further evidence of an adaptive "mating mode".

PubMed

Smith, David S; Jones, Benedict C; Allan, Kevin

2013-08-01

The functionalist memory perspective predicts that information of adaptive value may trigger specific processing modes. It was recently demonstrated that women's memory is sensitive to cues of male sexual dimorphism (i.e., masculinity) that convey information of adaptive value for mate choice because they signal health and genetic quality, as well as personality traits important in relationship contexts. Here, we show that individual differences in women's mating strategies predict the effect of facial masculinity cues upon memory, strengthening the case for functional design within memory. Using the revised socio-sexual orientation inventory, Experiment 1 demonstrates that women pursuing a short-term, uncommitted mating strategy have enhanced source memory for men with exaggerated versus reduced masculine facial features, an effect that reverses in women who favor long-term committed relationships. The reversal in the direction of the effect indicates that it does not reflect the sex typicality of male faces per se. The same pattern occurred within women's source memory for women's faces, implying that the memory bias does not reflect the perceived attractiveness of faces per se. In Experiment 2, we reran the experiment using men's faces to establish the reliability of the core finding and replicated Experiment 1's results. Masculinity cues may therefore trigger a specific mode within women's episodic memory. We discuss why this mode may be triggered by female faces and its possible role in mate choice. In so doing, we draw upon the encoding specificity principle and the idea that episodic memory limits the scope of stereotypical inferences about male behavior.

A face to remember: emotional expression modulates prefrontal activity during memory formation.

PubMed

Sergerie, Karine; Lepage, Martin; Armony, Jorge L

2005-01-15

Emotion can exert a modulatory role on episodic memory. Several studies have shown that negative stimuli (e.g., words, pictures) are better remembered than neutral ones. Although facial expressions are powerful emotional stimuli and have been shown to influence perception and attention processes, little is known about their effect on memory. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans to investigate the effects of expression (happy, neutral, and fearful) on prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during the encoding of faces, using a subsequent memory effect paradigm. Our results show that activity in right PFC predicted memory for faces, regardless of expression, while a homotopic region in the left hemisphere was associated with successful encoding only for faces with an emotional expression. These findings are consistent with the proposed role of right dorsolateral PFC in successful encoding of nonverbal material, but also suggest that left DLPFC may be a site where integration of memory and emotional processes occurs. This study sheds new light on the current controversy regarding the hemispheric lateralization of PFC in memory encoding.

Spaced Learning Enhances Subsequent Recognition Memory by Reducing Neural Repetition Suppression

PubMed Central

Xue, Gui; Mei, Leilei; Chen, Chuansheng; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Poldrack, Russell; Dong, Qi

2012-01-01

Spaced learning usually leads to better recognition memory as compared with massed learning, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. One open question is whether the spacing effect is achieved by reducing neural repetition suppression. In this fMRI study, participants were scanned while intentionally memorizing 120 novel faces, half under the massed learning condition (i.e., four consecutive repetitions with jittered interstimulus interval) and the other half under the spaced learning condition (i.e., the four repetitions were interleaved). Recognition memory tests afterward revealed a significant spacing effect: Participants recognized more items learned under the spaced learning condition than under the massed learning condition. Successful face memory encoding was associated with stronger activation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, which showed a significant repetition suppression effect modulated by subsequent memory status and spaced learning. Specifically, remembered faces showed smaller repetition suppression than forgotten faces under both learning conditions, and spaced learning significantly reduced repetition suppression. These results suggest that spaced learning enhances recognition memory by reducing neural repetition suppression. PMID:20617892

Spaced learning enhances subsequent recognition memory by reducing neural repetition suppression.

PubMed

Xue, Gui; Mei, Leilei; Chen, Chuansheng; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Poldrack, Russell; Dong, Qi

2011-07-01

Spaced learning usually leads to better recognition memory as compared with massed learning, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive. One open question is whether the spacing effect is achieved by reducing neural repetition suppression. In this fMRI study, participants were scanned while intentionally memorizing 120 novel faces, half under the massed learning condition (i.e., four consecutive repetitions with jittered interstimulus interval) and the other half under the spaced learning condition (i.e., the four repetitions were interleaved). Recognition memory tests afterward revealed a significant spacing effect: Participants recognized more items learned under the spaced learning condition than under the massed learning condition. Successful face memory encoding was associated with stronger activation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, which showed a significant repetition suppression effect modulated by subsequent memory status and spaced learning. Specifically, remembered faces showed smaller repetition suppression than forgotten faces under both learning conditions, and spaced learning significantly reduced repetition suppression. These results suggest that spaced learning enhances recognition memory by reducing neural repetition suppression.

Memory for “mean” over “nice”: The influence of threat on children’s face memory

PubMed Central

Kinzler, Katherine D.; Shutts, Kristin

2008-01-01

Adults remember faces of threatening over non-threatening individuals. This memory advantage could be indicative of a system rooted deeply in cognitive evolution to track and remember individuals who have been harmful in the past and therefore might be harmful again. Conversely, adults may have learned through experience that it pays to be vigilant. In the present research, we investigated whether attention to threatening individuals is privileged in young children’s face memory. In Experiment 1, preschool-age children showed a face recognition memory advantage for individuals who were said to have committed harmful rather than helpful actions. In a further experiment, children did not selectively remember individuals who were described as the recipients of these actions, suggesting that the memory enhancement was produced by threat rather than negative valence. Together, these findings provide evidence for an early-developing system for remembering threatening individuals, consistent with an evolutionary account of its origins. PMID:18001702

Allium sativum L. Improves Visual Memory and Attention in Healthy Human Volunteers

PubMed Central

Tasnim, Sara; Haque, Parsa Sanjana; Bari, Md. Sazzadul; Hossain, Md. Monir; Islam, Sardar Mohd. Ashraful; Shahriar, Mohammad; Bhuiyan, Mohiuddin Ahmed; Bin Sayeed, Muhammad Shahdaat

2015-01-01

Studies have shown that Allium sativum L. (AS) protects amyloid-beta peptide-induced apoptosis, prevents oxidative insults to neurons and synapses, and thus prevent Alzheimer's disease progression in experimental animals. However, there is no experimental evidence in human regarding its putative role in memory and cognition. We have studied the effect of AS consumption by healthy human volunteers on visual memory, verbal memory, attention, and executive function in comparison to control subjects taking placebo. The study was conducted over five weeks and twenty volunteers of both genders were recruited and divided randomly into two groups: A (AS) and B (placebo). Both groups participated in the 6 computerized neuropsychological tests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) twice: at the beginning and after five weeks of the study. We found statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) in several parameters of visual memory and attention due to AS ingestion. We also found statistically nonsignificant (p > 0.05) beneficial effects on verbal memory and executive function within a short period of time among the volunteers. Study for a longer period of time with patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases might yield more relevant results regarding the potential therapeutic role of AS. PMID:26351508

Face-Recognition Memory: Implications for Children's Eyewitness Testimony.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chance, June E.; Goldstein, Alvin G.

1984-01-01

Reviews studies of face-recognition memory and considers implications for assessing the dependability of children's performances as eyewitnesses. Considers personal factors (age, intellectual differences, and gender) and situational factors (familiarity of face, retention interval, and others). Also identifies developmental questions for future…

Own attractiveness and perceived relationship quality shape sensitivity in women's memory for other men on the attractiveness dimension.

PubMed

Watkins, Christopher D; Nicholls, Mike J; Batres, Carlota; Xiao, Dengke; Talamas, Sean; Perrett, David I

2017-06-01

Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e., studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women's memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as more-attractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women's memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition ('market demand') and relationship maintenance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Faces are special but not too special: Spared face recognition in amnesia is based on familiarity

PubMed Central

Aly, Mariam; Knight, Robert T.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

2014-01-01

Most current theories of human memory are material-general in the sense that they assume that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is important for retrieving the details of prior events, regardless of the specific type of materials. Recent studies of amnesia have challenged the material-general assumption by suggesting that the MTL may be necessary for remembering words, but is not involved in remembering faces. We examined recognition memory for faces and words in a group of amnesic patients, which included hypoxic patients and patients with extensive left or right MTL lesions. Recognition confidence judgments were used to plot receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) in order to more fully quantify recognition performance and to estimate the contributions of recollection and familiarity. Consistent with the extant literature, an analysis of overall recognition accuracy showed that the patients were impaired at word memory but had spared face memory. However, the ROC analysis indicated that the patients were generally impaired at high confidence recognition responses for faces and words, and they exhibited significant recollection impairments for both types of materials. Familiarity for faces was preserved in all patients, but extensive left MTL damage impaired familiarity for words. These results suggest that face recognition may appear to be spared because performance tends to rely heavily on familiarity, a process that is relatively well preserved in amnesia. The findings challenge material-general theories of memory, and suggest that both material and process are important determinants of memory performance in amnesia, and different types of materials may depend more or less on recollection and familiarity. PMID:20833190

Brain Region-Specific Expression of Genes Mapped within Quantitative Trait Loci for Behavioral Responsiveness to Acute Stress in Fisher 344 and Wistar Kyoto Male Rats (Postprint)

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-03-12

Integrative Genomics Viewer (Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts), we iden- tified the coding sequence variations between the F344 and WKY... abnormalities and disturbances in brain metabolism resem- bling those in depressive states [74]. Ifna2 is also known to induce memory, concentration, and...Variant and Chronic Interpersonal Stress Prospectively Predicts Social Anxiety and Depression Symptoms Over Six Years. Clinical psychological science

Face Encoding and Recognition in the Human Brain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haxby, James V.; Ungerleider, Leslie G.; Horwitz, Barry; Maisog, Jose Ma.; Rapoport, Stanley I.; Grady, Cheryl L.

1996-01-01

A dissociation between human neural systems that participate in the encoding and later recognition of new memories for faces was demonstrated by measuring memory task-related changes in regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography. There was almost no overlap between the brain structures associated with these memory functions. A region in the right hippocampus and adjacent cortex was activated during memory encoding but not during recognition. The most striking finding in neocortex was the lateralization of prefrontal participation. Encoding activated left prefrontal cortex, whereas recognition activated right prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that the hippocampus and adjacent cortex participate in memory function primarily at the time of new memory encoding. Moreover, face recognition is not mediated simply by recapitulation of operations performed at the time of encoding but, rather, involves anatomically dissociable operations.

Internal consistency and stability of the CANTAB neuropsychological test battery in children.

PubMed

Syväoja, Heidi J; Tammelin, Tuija H; Ahonen, Timo; Räsänen, Pekka; Tolvanen, Asko; Kankaanpää, Anna; Kantomaa, Marko T

2015-06-01

The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) is a computer-assessed test battery widely use in different populations. The internal consistency and 1-year stability of CANTAB tests were examined in school-age children. Two hundred-thirty children (57% girls) from five schools in the Jyväskylä school district in Finland participated in the study in spring 2011. The children completed the following CANTAB tests: (a) visual memory (pattern recognition memory [PRM] and spatial recognition memory [SRM]), (b) executive function (spatial span [SSP], Stockings of Cambridge [SOC], and intra-extra dimensional set shift [IED]), and (c) attention (reaction time [RTI] and rapid visual information processing [RVP]). Seventy-four children participated in the follow-up measurements (64% girls) in spring 2012. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was used to estimate the internal consistency of the nonhampering test, and structural equation models were applied to examine the stability of these tests. The reliability and the stability could not be determined for IED or SSP because of the nature of these tests. The internal consistency was acceptable only in the RTI task. The 1-year stability was moderate-to-good for the PRM, RTI, and RVP. The SSP and IED showed a moderate correlation between the two measurement points. The SRM and the SOC tasks were not reliable or stable measures in this study population. For research purposes, we recommend using structural equation modeling to improve reliability. The results suggest that the reliability and the stability of computer-based test batteries should be confirmed in the target population before using them for clinical or research purposes. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Specific Features of Executive Dysfunction in Alzheimer-Type Mild Dementia Based on Computerized Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) Test Results.

PubMed

Kuzmickienė, Jurgita; Kaubrys, Gintaras

2016-10-08

BACKGROUND The primary manifestation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is decline in memory. Dysexecutive symptoms have tremendous impact on functional activities and quality of life. Data regarding frontal-executive dysfunction in mild AD are controversial. The aim of this study was to assess the presence and specific features of executive dysfunction in mild AD based on Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) results. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fifty newly diagnosed, treatment-naïve, mild, late-onset AD patients (MMSE ≥20, AD group) and 25 control subjects (CG group) were recruited in this prospective, cross-sectional study. The CANTAB tests CRT, SOC, PAL, SWM were used for in-depth cognitive assessment. Comparisons were performed using the t test or Mann-Whitney U test, as appropriate. Correlations were evaluated by Pearson r or Spearman R. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. RESULTS AD and CG groups did not differ according to age, education, gender, or depression. Few differences were found between groups in the SOC test for performance measures: Mean moves (minimum 3 moves): AD (Rank Sum=2227), CG (Rank Sum=623), p<0.001. However, all SOC test time measures differed significantly between groups: SOC Mean subsequent thinking time (4 moves): AD (Rank Sum=2406), CG (Rank Sum=444), p<0.001. Correlations were weak between executive function (SOC) and episodic/working memory (PAL, SWM) (R=0.01-0.38) or attention/psychomotor speed (CRT) (R=0.02-0.37). CONCLUSIONS Frontal-executive functions are impaired in mild AD patients. Executive dysfunction is highly prominent in time measures, but minimal in performance measures. Executive disorders do not correlate with a decline in episodic and working memory or psychomotor speed in mild AD.

Sex, cheating, and disgust: enhanced source memory for trait information that violates gender stereotypes.

PubMed

Kroneisen, Meike; Bell, Raoul

2013-01-01

The present study examines memory for social-exchange-relevant information. In Experiment 1 male and female faces were shown together with behaviour descriptions of cheating, altruistic, and neutral behaviour. Previous results have led to the hypothesis that people preferentially remember schema-atypical information. Given the common gender stereotype that women are kinder and less egoistic than men, this atypicality account would predict that source memory (that is, memory for the type of context to which a face was associated) should be enhanced for female cheaters in comparison to male cheaters. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed this hypothesis. Experiment 2 reveals that source memory for female faces associated with disgusting behaviours is enhanced in comparison to male faces associated with disgusting behaviours. Thus the atypicality effect generalises beyond social-exchange-relevant information, a result which is inconsistent with the assumption that the findings can be ascribed to a highly specific cheater detection module.

ERP profiles for face and word recognition are based on their status in semantic memory not their stimulus category.

PubMed

Nie, Aiqing; Griffin, Michael; Keinath, Alexander; Walsh, Matthew; Dittmann, Andrea; Reder, Lynne

2014-04-04

Previous research has suggested that faces and words are processed and remembered differently as reflected by different ERP patterns for the two types of stimuli. Specifically, face stimuli produced greater late positive deflections for old items in anterior compared to posterior regions, while word stimuli produced greater late positive deflections in posterior compared to anterior regions. Given that words have existing representations in subjects׳ long-term memories (LTM) and that face stimuli used in prior experiments were of unknown individuals, we conducted an ERP study that crossed face and letter stimuli with the presence or absence of a prior (stable or existing) memory representation. During encoding, subjects judged whether stimuli were known (famous face or real word) or not known (unknown person or pseudo-word). A surprise recognition memory test required subjects to distinguish between stimuli that appeared during the encoding phase and stimuli that did not. ERP results were consistent with previous research when comparing unknown faces and words; however, the late ERP pattern for famous faces was more similar to that for words than for unknown faces. This suggests that the critical ERP difference is mediated by whether there is a prior representation in LTM, and not whether the stimulus involves letters or faces. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Wavelet-based associative memory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, Katharine J.

2004-04-01

Faces provide important characteristics of a person"s identification. In security checks, face recognition still remains the method in continuous use despite other approaches (i.e. fingerprints, voice recognition, pupil contraction, DNA scanners). With an associative memory, the output data is recalled directly using the input data. This can be achieved with a Nonlinear Holographic Associative Memory (NHAM). This approach can also distinguish between strongly correlated images and images that are partially or totally enclosed by others. Adaptive wavelet lifting has been used for Content-Based Image Retrieval. In this paper, adaptive wavelet lifting will be applied to face recognition to achieve an associative memory.

Familiarity enhances visual working memory for faces.

PubMed

Jackson, Margaret C; Raymond, Jane E

2008-06-01

Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or inverted and a low- or high-load concurrent verbal WM task was administered to suppress contribution from verbal WM. Even with a high verbal memory load, visual WM performance was significantly better and capacity estimated as significantly greater for famous versus unfamiliar faces. Face inversion abolished this effect. Thus, neither strategic, explicit support from verbal WM nor low-level feature processing easily accounts for the observed benefit of high familiarity for visual WM. These results demonstrate that storage of items in visual WM can be enhanced if robust visual representations of them already exist in long-term memory.

Improving visual memory, attention, and school function with atomoxetine in boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

PubMed

Shang, Chi-Yung; Gau, Susan Shur-Fen

2012-10-01

Atomoxetine is efficacious in reducing symptoms of attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but its effect on visual memory and attention needs more investigation. This study aimed to assess the effect of atomoxetine on visual memory, attention, and school function in boys with ADHD in Taiwan. This was an open-label 12 week atomoxetine treatment trial among 30 drug-naíve boys with ADHD, aged 8-16 years. Before administration of atomoxetine, the participants were assessed using psychiatric interviews, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 3rd edition (WISC-III), the school function of the Chinese version of the Social Adjustment Inventory for Children and Adolescents (SAICA), the Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT), and the tasks of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) involving visual memory and attention: Pattern Recognition Memory, Spatial Recognition Memory, and Reaction Time, which were reassessed at weeks 4 and 12. Our results showed there was significant improvement in pattern recognition memory and spatial recognition memory as measured by the CANTAB tasks, sustained attention and response inhibition as measured by the CPT, and reaction time as measured by the CANTAB after treatment with atomoxetine for 4 weeks or 12 weeks. In addition, atomoxetine significantly enhanced school functioning in children with ADHD. Our findings suggested that atomoxetine was associated with significant improvement in visual memory, attention, and school functioning in boys with ADHD.

Emerging Depression Is Associated with Face Memory Deficits in Adolescent Girls

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guyer, Amanda E.; Choate, Victoria R.; Grimm, Kevin J.; Pine, Daniel S.; Keenan, Kate

2011-01-01

Objective: To examine the association between memory for previously encoded emotional faces and depression symptoms assessed over 4 years in adolescent girls. Investigating the interface between memory deficits and depression in adolescent girls may provide clues about depression pathophysiology. Method: Participants were 213 girls recruited from…

"Just another pretty face": a multidimensional scaling approach to face attractiveness and variability.

PubMed

Potter, Timothy; Corneille, Olivier; Ruys, Kirsten I; Rhodes, Ginwan

2007-04-01

Findings on both attractiveness and memory for faces suggest that people should perceive more similarity among attractive than among unattractive faces. A multidimensional scaling approach was used to test this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, we derived a psychological face space from similarity ratings of attractive and unattractive Caucasian female faces. In Study 2, we derived a face space for attractive and unattractive male faces of Caucasians and non-Caucasians. Both studies confirm that attractive faces are indeed more tightly clustered than unattractive faces in people's psychological face spaces. These studies provide direct and original support for theoretical assumptions previously made in the face space and face memory literatures.

Stereotype Priming in Face Recognition: Interactions between Semantic and Visual Information in Face Encoding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hills, Peter J.; Lewis, Michael B.; Honey, R. C.

2008-01-01

The accuracy with which previously unfamiliar faces are recognised is increased by the presentation of a stereotype-congruent occupation label [Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982a). "Semantic interpretation effects on memory for faces." "Memory & Cognition," 10, 195-206; Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982b).…

Improving Preschoolers' Recognition Memory for Faces with Orienting Information.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montepare, Joann M.

To determine whether preschool children's memory for unfamiliar faces could be facilitated by giving them orienting information about faces, 4- and 5-year-old subjects were told that they were going to play a guessing game in which they would be looking at faces and guessing which ones they had seen before. In study 1, 6 boys and 6 girls within…

The Role of Active Exploration of 3D Face Stimuli on Recognition Memory of Facial Information

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Chang Hong; Ward, James; Markall, Helena

2007-01-01

Research on face recognition has mainly relied on methods in which observers are relatively passive viewers of face stimuli. This study investigated whether active exploration of three-dimensional (3D) face stimuli could facilitate recognition memory. A standard recognition task and a sequential matching task were employed in a yoked design.…

The Role of Eyes and Mouth in the Memory of a Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKelvie, Stuart J.

1976-01-01

Investigates the relative importance that the eyes and mouth play in the representation in memory of a human face. Systematically applies two kinds of transformation--masking the eyes or the mouths on photographs of faces--and observes the effects on recognition. (Author/RK)

Impaired Word and Face Recognition in Older Adults with Type 2 Diabetes.

PubMed

Jones, Nicola; Riby, Leigh M; Smith, Michael A

2016-07-01

Older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) exhibit accelerated decline in some domains of cognition including verbal episodic memory. Few studies have investigated the influence of DM2 status in older adults on recognition memory for more complex stimuli such as faces. In the present study we sought to compare recognition memory performance for words, objects and faces under conditions of relatively low and high cognitive load. Healthy older adults with good glucoregulatory control (n = 13) and older adults with DM2 (n = 24) were administered recognition memory tasks in which stimuli (faces, objects and words) were presented under conditions of either i) low (stimulus presented without a background pattern) or ii) high (stimulus presented against a background pattern) cognitive load. In a subsequent recognition phase, the DM2 group recognized fewer faces than healthy controls. Further, the DM2 group exhibited word recognition deficits in the low cognitive load condition. The recognition memory impairment observed in patients with DM2 has clear implications for day-to-day functioning. Although these deficits were not amplified under conditions of increased cognitive load, the present study emphasizes that recognition memory impairment for both words and more complex stimuli such as face are a feature of DM2 in older adults. Copyright © 2016 IMSS. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in perceiving and recognizing faces-One element of social cognition.

PubMed

Wilhelm, Oliver; Herzmann, Grit; Kunina, Olga; Danthiir, Vanessa; Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2010-09-01

Recognizing faces swiftly and accurately is of paramount importance to humans as a social species. Individual differences in the ability to perform these tasks may therefore reflect important aspects of social or emotional intelligence. Although functional models of face cognition based on group and single case studies postulate multiple component processes, little is known about the ability structure underlying individual differences in face cognition. In 2 large individual differences experiments (N = 151 and N = 209), a broad variety of face-cognition tasks were tested and the component abilities of face cognition-face perception, face memory, and the speed of face cognition-were identified and then replicated. Experiment 2 also showed that the 3 face-cognition abilities are clearly distinct from immediate and delayed memory, mental speed, general cognitive ability, and object cognition. These results converge with functional and neuroanatomical models of face cognition by demonstrating the difference between face perception and face memory. The results also underline the importance of distinguishing between speed and accuracy of face cognition. Together our results provide a first step toward establishing face-processing abilities as an independent ability reflecting elements of social intelligence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Familiarity Enhances Visual Working Memory for Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Margaret C.; Raymond, Jane E.

2008-01-01

Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or…

Recovering Faces from Memory: The Distracting Influence of External Facial Features

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frowd, Charlie D.; Skelton, Faye; Atherton, Chris; Pitchford, Melanie; Hepton, Gemma; Holden, Laura; McIntyre, Alex H.; Hancock, Peter J. B.

2012-01-01

Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried…

Neural conflict-control mechanisms improve memory for target stimuli.

PubMed

Krebs, Ruth M; Boehler, Carsten N; De Belder, Maya; Egner, Tobias

2015-03-01

According to conflict-monitoring models, conflict serves as an internal signal for reinforcing top-down attention to task-relevant information. While evidence based on measures of ongoing task performance supports this idea, implications for long-term consequences, that is, memory, have not been tested yet. Here, we evaluated the prediction that conflict-triggered attentional enhancement of target-stimulus processing should be associated with superior subsequent memory for those stimuli. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a novel variant of a face-word Stroop task that employed trial-unique face stimuli as targets, we were able to assess subsequent (incidental) memory for target faces as a function of whether a given face had previously been accompanied by congruent, neutral, or incongruent (conflicting) distracters. In line with our predictions, incongruent distracters not only induced behavioral conflict, but also gave rise to enhanced memory for target faces. Moreover, conflict-triggered neural activity in prefrontal and parietal regions was predictive of subsequent retrieval success, and displayed conflict-enhanced functional coupling with medial-temporal lobe regions. These data provide support for the proposal that conflict evokes enhanced top-down attention to task-relevant stimuli, thereby promoting their encoding into long-term memory. Our findings thus delineate the neural mechanisms of a novel link between cognitive control and memory. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Mapping attractor fields in face space: the atypicality bias in face recognition.

PubMed

Tanaka, J; Giles, M; Kremen, S; Simon, V

1998-09-01

A familiar face can be recognized across many changes in the stimulus input. In this research, the many-to-one mapping of face stimuli to a single face memory is referred to as a face memory's 'attractor field'. According to the attractor field approach, a face memory will be activated by any stimuli falling within the boundaries of its attractor field. It was predicted that by virtue of its location in a multi-dimensional face space, the attractor field of an atypical face will be larger than the attractor field of a typical face. To test this prediction, subjects make likeness judgments to morphed faces that contained a 50/50 contribution from an atypical and a typical parent face. The main result of four experiments was that the morph face was judged to bear a stronger resemblance to the atypical face parent than the typical face parent. The computational basis of the atypicality bias was demonstrated in a neural network simulation where morph inputs of atypical and typical representations elicited stronger activation of atypical output units than of typical output units. Together, the behavioral and simulation evidence supports the view that the attractor fields of atypical faces span over a broader region of face space that the attractor fields of typical faces.

Testing for Near and Far Transfer Effects with a Short, Face-to-Face Adaptive Working Memory Training Intervention in Typical Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Lucy A.; Messer, David J.; Nash, Gilly

2014-01-01

A relatively quick, face-to-face, adaptive working memory training intervention was assessed in 5-to 8-year-old typically developing children, randomly allocated to a 6-week intervention condition, or an active control condition. All children received 18 sessions of 10?minutes, three times/week for 6?weeks. Assessments of six working memory…

Gender Differences in Memory Processing: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials to Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guillem, F.; Mograss, M.

2005-01-01

This study investigated gender differences on memory processing using event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data and ERPs were recorded in 16 males and 10 females during a recognition memory task for faces. The behavioral data results showed that females performed better than males. Gender differences on ERPs were evidenced over anterior…

Emotional Memories Are Not All Created Equal: Evidence for Selective Memory Enhancement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Adam K.; Grabski, Wojtek; Lacka, Dominika; Yamaguchi, Yuki

2006-01-01

Human brain imaging studies have shown that greater amygdala activation to emotional relative to neutral events leads to enhanced episodic memory. Other studies have shown that fearful faces also elicit greater amygdala activation relative to neutral faces. To the extent that amygdala recruitment is sufficient to enhance recollection, these…

Face-name learning in older adults: a benefit of hyper-binding.

PubMed

Weeks, Jennifer C; Biss, Renée K; Murphy, Kelly J; Hasher, Lynn

2016-10-01

Difficulty remembering faces and corresponding names is a hallmark of cognitive aging, as is increased susceptibility to distraction. Given evidence that older adults spontaneously encode relationships between target pictures and simultaneously occurring distractors (a hyper-binding phenomenon), we asked whether memory for face-name pairs could be improved through prior exposure to faces presented with distractor names. In three experiments, young and older adults performed a selective attention task on faces while ignoring superimposed names. After a delay, they learned and were tested on face-name pairs that were either maintained or rearranged from the initial task but were not told of the connection between tasks. In each experiment, older but not younger participants showed better memory for maintained than for rearranged pairs, indicating that older adults' natural propensity to tacitly encode and bind relevant and irrelevant information can be employed to aid face-name memory performance.

Face Memory: Implications for theories of binding items to context

PubMed Central

Reder, L. M.; Victoria, L. W.; Manelis, A.; Oates, J. M.; Dutcher, J. M.; Bates, J. T.; Cook, S.; Aizenstein, H. A.; Quinlan, J.; Gyulai, F.

2014-01-01

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that it is easier to bind a stimulus to context when the stimulus already has a stable (i.e., pre-existing) memory representation by comparing episodic memory of faces of celebrities vs. unknown individuals. Each face was superimposed on a picture of a well-known location (e.g., Eiffel Tower) during encoding and at a later unexpected recognition test but the background could change from encoding to test. Although recognition was to be based on the face, irrespective of background, performance was better when encoding context was reinstated. Further, a given background could be shown with many faces ("high fan") or only a few ("low fan") and this variable modulated the value added of context reinstatement. Importantly, manipulations of context only mattered for famous faces. As predicted, these effects were observed in recollection ("Remember") responses not in familiarity (“Know”) responses. Experiment 2 used the same design except that half of the subjects were administered midazolam, a drug that produces temporary anterograde amnesia, prior to encoding faces and backgrounds. Subjects injected with saline (control condition) showed the same pattern as Experiment 1; however subjects injected with midazolam showed a large decrease in the use of the "Remember" responses for famous faces and neither context reinstatement nor background fan affected performance. These results support the view that it is easier to bind stimuli to context when stimuli have a pre-existing, stable memory representation (e.g., faces of people whose identity we know) than when stimuli do not have pre-existing, stable memory representations. PMID:23395827

The utility of the Cambridge Behavioural Inventory in neurodegenerative disease.

PubMed

Wedderburn, C; Wear, H; Brown, J; Mason, S J; Barker, R A; Hodges, J; Williams-Gray, C

2008-05-01

We investigated the utility of the Cambridge Behavioural Inventory (CBI), a carer-completed questionnaire, in a large cohort with Parkinson's disease (PD) (n = 215). In a sub-cohort of 112 patients with PD, the CBI was found to be a valid instrument compared with the Neuropsychiatric Inventory, PDQ-39 and UPDRS, with high internal consistency. Furthermore, in the whole cohort, the CBI was sensitive to changes in behaviour with disease progression. Comparison between CBI scores in PD and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's disease (HD) (n = 75), Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 96) and frontal variant frontotemporal dementia (fvFTD) (n = 64), revealed distinct profiles for each disease. Predominant deficits were "sleep"' and "self care" in PD; "memory" in HD and AD; and "motivation" and "stereotypic behaviours" in fvFTD. The CBI is a robust, easy-to-use and valid instrument, which has the capacity to discriminate between neurodegenerative diseases, and may be of value in monitoring therapeutic interventions.

Age Differentiation within Gray Matter, White Matter, and between Memory and White Matter in an Adult Life Span Cohort.

PubMed

de Mooij, Susanne M M; Henson, Richard N A; Waldorp, Lourens J; Kievit, Rogier A

2018-06-20

It is well established that brain structures and cognitive functions change across the life span. A long-standing hypothesis called "age differentiation" additionally posits that the relations between cognitive functions also change with age. To date, however, evidence for age-related differentiation is mixed, and no study has examined differentiation of the relationship between brain and cognition. Here we use multigroup structural equation models (SEMs) and SEM trees to study differences within and between brain and cognition across the adult life span (18-88 years) in a large ( N > 646, closely matched across sexes), population-derived sample of healthy human adults from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (www.cam-can.org). After factor analyses of gray matter volume (from T1- and T2-weighted MRI) and white matter organization (fractional anisotropy from diffusion-weighted MRI), we found evidence for the differentiation of gray and white matter, such that the covariance between brain factors decreased with age. However, we found no evidence for age differentiation among fluid intelligence, language, and memory, suggesting a relatively stable covariance pattern among cognitive factors. Finally, we observed a specific pattern of age differentiation between brain and cognitive factors, such that a white matter factor, which loaded most strongly on the hippocampal cingulum, became less correlated with memory performance in later life. These patterns are compatible with the reorganization of cognitive functions in the face of neural decline, and/or with the emergence of specific subpopulations in old age. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The theory of age differentiation posits age-related changes in the relationships among cognitive domains, either weakening (differentiation) or strengthening (dedifferentiation), but evidence for this hypothesis is mixed. Using age-varying covariance models in a large cross-sectional adult life span sample, we found age-related reductions in the covariance among both brain measures (neural differentiation), but no covariance change among cognitive factors of fluid intelligence, language, and memory. We also observed evidence of uncoupling (differentiation) between a white matter factor and cognitive factors in older age, most strongly for memory. Together, our findings support age-related differentiation as a complex, multifaceted pattern that differs for brain and cognition, and discuss several mechanisms that might explain the changing relationship between brain and cognition. Copyright © 2018 de Mooij et al.

The own-age bias in face memory is unrelated to differences in attention--evidence from event-related potentials.

PubMed

Neumann, Markus F; End, Albert; Luttmann, Stefanie; Schweinberger, Stefan R; Wiese, Holger

2015-03-01

Participants are more accurate at remembering faces from their own relative to a different age group (the own-age bias, or OAB). A recent socio-cognitive account has suggested that differential allocation of attention to old versus young faces underlies this phenomenon. Critically, empirical evidence for a direct relationship between attention to own- versus other-age faces and the OAB in memory is lacking. To fill this gap, we tested the roles of attention in three different experimental paradigms, and additionally analyzed event-related brain potentials (ERPs). In Experiment 1, we compared the learning of old and young faces during focused versus divided attention, but revealed similar OABs in subsequent memory for both attention conditions. Similarly, manipulating attention during learning did not differentially affect the ERPs elicited by young versus old faces. In Experiment 2, we examined the repetition effects from task-irrelevant old and young faces presented under varying attentional loads on the N250r ERP component as an index of face recognition. Independent of load, the N250r effects were comparable for both age categories. Finally, in Experiment 3 we measured the N2pc as an index of attentional selection of old versus young target faces in a visual search task. The N2pc was not significantly different for the young versus the old target search conditions, suggesting similar orientations of attention to either face age group. Overall, we propose that the OAB in memory is largely unrelated to early attentional processes. Our findings therefore contrast with the predictions from socio-cognitive accounts on own-group biases in recognition memory, and are more easily reconciled with expertise-based models.

Prospective memory performance in non-psychotic first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia: a controlled study.

PubMed

Zhou, Fu-Chun; Hou, Wei-Min; Wang, Chuan-Yue; Ungvari, Gabor S; Chiu, Helen F K; Correll, Christoph U; Shum, David H K; Man, David; Liu, Deng-Tang; Xiang, Yu-Tao

2014-01-01

We aimed at investigating prospective memory and its socio-demographic and neurocognitive correlates in non-psychotic, first-degree relatives (FDRs) of patients with schizophrenia compared to patients with first episode schizophrenia (FES), and healthy controls (HCs). Forty-seven FES patients, 50 non-psychotic FDRs (23 offspring and 27 siblings) of patients with chronic schizophrenia (unrelated to the FES group) and 51 HCs were studied. The Chinese version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test (C-CAMPROMPT) was used to measure time-based prospective memory (TBPM) and event-based prospective memory (EBPM) performance. Other cognitive functions (involving respective memory and executive functions) were evaluated with standardized tests. After controlling for basic demographic characteristics including age, gender and educational level, there was a significant difference between FDRs, FES and HCs with respect to both TBPM (F(2,142) = 10.4, p<0.001) and EBPM (F(2,142) = 10.8, p<0.001). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that lower scores of the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) and the STROOP Word-Color Test (SWCT) contributed to TBPM impairment, while lower educational level and higher scores of the Color Trails Test-2 (CTT-2) contributed to EBPM deficit in FDRs. FDRs share similar but attenuated prospective memory impairments with schizophrenia patients, suggesting that prospective memory deficits may represent an endophenotype of schizophrenia.

Value conditioning modulates visual working memory processes.

PubMed

Thomas, Paul M J; FitzGibbon, Lily; Raymond, Jane E

2016-01-01

Learning allows the value of motivationally salient events to become associated with stimuli that predict those events. Here, we asked whether value associations could facilitate visual working memory (WM), and whether such effects would be valence dependent. Our experiment was specifically designed to isolate value-based effects on WM from value-based effects on selective attention that might be expected to bias encoding. In a simple associative learning task, participants learned to associate the color of tinted faces with gaining or losing money or neither. Tinted faces then served as memoranda in a face identity WM task for which previously learned color associations were irrelevant and no monetary outcomes were forthcoming. Memory was best for faces with gain-associated tints, poorest for faces with loss-associated tints, and average for faces with no-outcome-associated tints. Value associated with 1 item in the WM array did not modulate memory for other items in the array. Eye movements when studying faces did not depend on the valence of previously learned color associations, arguing against value-based biases being due to differential encoding. This valence-sensitive value-conditioning effect on WM appears to result from modulation of WM maintenance processes. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion-attention interactions in recognition memory for distractor faces.

PubMed

Srinivasan, Narayanan; Gupta, Rashmi

2010-04-01

Effective filtering of distractor information has been shown to be dependent on perceptual load. Given the salience of emotional information and the presence of emotion-attention interactions, we wanted to explore the recognition memory for emotional distractors especially as a function of focused attention and distributed attention by manipulating load and the spatial spread of attention. We performed two experiments to study emotion-attention interactions by measuring recognition memory performance for distractor neutral and emotional faces. Participants performed a color discrimination task (low-load) or letter identification task (high-load) with a letter string display in Experiment 1 and a high-load letter identification task with letters presented in a circular array in Experiment 2. The stimuli were presented against a distractor face background. The recognition memory results show that happy faces were recognized better than sad faces under conditions of less focused or distributed attention. When attention is more spatially focused, sad faces were recognized better than happy faces. The study provides evidence for emotion-attention interactions in which specific emotional information like sad or happy is associated with focused or distributed attention respectively. Distractor processing with emotional information also has implications for theories of attention. Copyright 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Oxytocin eliminates the own-race bias in face recognition memory.

PubMed

Blandón-Gitlin, Iris; Pezdek, Kathy; Saldivar, Sesar; Steelman, Erin

2014-09-11

The neuropeptide Oxytocin influences a number of social behaviors, including processing of faces. We examined whether Oxytocin facilitates the processing of out-group faces and reduce the own-race bias (ORB). The ORB is a robust phenomenon characterized by poor recognition memory of other-race faces compared to the same-race faces. In Experiment 1, participants received intranasal solutions of Oxytocin or placebo prior to viewing White and Black faces. On a subsequent recognition test, whereas in the placebo condition the same-race faces were better recognized than other-race faces, in the Oxytocin condition Black and White faces were equally well recognized, effectively eliminating the ORB. In Experiment 2, Oxytocin was administered after the study phase. The ORB resulted, but Oxytocin did not significantly reduce the effect. This study is the first to show that Oxytocin can enhance face memory of out-group members and underscore the importance of social encoding mechanisms underlying the own-race bias. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Oxytocin and Social Behav. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brain activation while forming memories of fearful and neutral faces in women and men.

PubMed

Fischer, Håkan; Sandblom, Johan; Nyberg, Lars; Herlitz, Agneta; Bäckman, Lars

2007-11-01

Event-related functional MRI (fMRI) was used to assess brain activity during encoding of fearful and neutral faces in 12 women and 12 men. In a subsequent memory analysis, the authors separated successful from unsuccessful encoding of both types of faces, based on whether they were remembered or forgotten in a later recognition memory test. Overall, women and men recruited overlapping neural circuitries. Both sexes activated right-sided medial-temporal regions during successful encoding of fearful faces. Successful encoding of neutral faces was associated with left-sided lateral prefrontal and right-sided superior frontal activation in both sexes. In women, relatively greater encoding related activity for neutral faces was seen in the superior parietal and parahippocampal cortices. By contrast, men activated the left and right superior/middle frontal cortex more than women during successful encoding of the same neutral faces. These findings suggest that women and men use similar neural networks to encode facial information, with only subtle sex differences observed for neutral faces.

Influence of emotional expression on memory recognition bias in schizophrenia as revealed by fMRI.

PubMed

Sergerie, Karine; Armony, Jorge L; Menear, Matthew; Sutton, Hazel; Lepage, Martin

2010-07-01

We recently showed that, in healthy individuals, emotional expression influences memory for faces both in terms of accuracy and, critically, in memory response bias (tendency to classify stimuli as previously seen or not, regardless of whether this was the case). Although schizophrenia has been shown to be associated with deficit in episodic memory and emotional processing, the relation between these processes in this population remains unclear. Here, we used our previously validated paradigm to directly investigate the modulation of emotion on memory recognition. Twenty patients with schizophrenia and matched healthy controls completed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of recognition memory of happy, sad, and neutral faces. Brain activity associated with the response bias was obtained by correlating this measure with the contrast subjective old (ie, hits and false alarms) minus subjective new (misses and correct rejections) for sad and happy expressions. Although patients exhibited an overall lower memory performance than controls, they showed the same effects of emotion on memory, both in terms of accuracy and bias. For sad faces, the similar behavioral pattern between groups was mirrored by a largely overlapping neural network, mostly involved in familiarity-based judgments (eg, parahippocampal gyrus). In contrast, controls activated a much larger set of regions for happy faces, including areas thought to underlie recollection-based memory retrieval (eg, superior frontal gyrus and hippocampus) and in novelty detection (eg, amygdala). This study demonstrates that, despite an overall lower memory accuracy, emotional memory is intact in schizophrenia, although emotion-specific differences in brain activation exist, possibly reflecting different strategies.

The Own-Age Bias in Face Recognition: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rhodes, Matthew G.; Anastasi, Jeffrey S.

2012-01-01

A large number of studies have examined the finding that recognition memory for faces of one's own age group is often superior to memory for faces of another age group. We examined this "own-age bias" (OAB) in the meta-analyses reported. These data showed that hits were reliably greater for same-age relative to other-age faces (g = 0.23) and that…

Perceptual impairment in face identification with poor sleep

PubMed Central

Beattie, Louise; Walsh, Darragh; McLaren, Jessica; Biello, Stephany M.

2016-01-01

Previous studies have shown impaired memory for faces following restricted sleep. However, it is not known whether lack of sleep impairs performance on face identification tasks that do not rely on recognition memory, despite these tasks being more prevalent in security and forensic professions—for example, in photo-ID checks at national borders. Here we tested whether poor sleep affects accuracy on a standard test of face-matching ability that does not place demands on memory: the Glasgow Face-Matching Task (GFMT). In Experiment 1, participants who reported sleep disturbance consistent with insomnia disorder show impaired accuracy on the GFMT when compared with participants reporting normal sleep behaviour. In Experiment 2, we then used a sleep diary method to compare GFMT accuracy in a control group to participants reporting poor sleep on three consecutive nights—and again found lower accuracy scores in the short sleep group. In both experiments, reduced face-matching accuracy in those with poorer sleep was not associated with lower confidence in their decisions, carrying implications for occupational settings where identification errors made with high confidence can have serious outcomes. These results suggest that sleep-related impairments in face memory reflect difficulties in perceptual encoding of identity, and point towards metacognitive impairment in face matching following poor sleep. PMID:27853547

On the Flexibility of Social Source Memory: A Test of the Emotional Incongruity Hypothesis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel; Kroneisen, Meike; Giang, Trang

2012-01-01

A popular hypothesis in evolutionary psychology posits that reciprocal altruism is supported by a cognitive module that helps cooperative individuals to detect and remember cheaters. Consistent with this hypothesis, a source memory advantage for faces of cheaters (better memory for the cheating context in which these faces were encountered) was…

Effects of Varied and Constant Environmental Contexts on Acquisition and Retention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Steven M.; Handy, Justin D.

2014-01-01

Four experiments examined the decontextualization of memories, the stage of learning in which memories can be recalled in the absence of episodic memory cues. Face--name pairs were studied with video-recorded environmental contexts in the background, and after 5 practice trials, recall of names associated with faces was tested in the absence of…

Executive functions predict conceptual learning of science.

PubMed

Rhodes, Sinéad M; Booth, Josephine N; Palmer, Lorna Elise; Blythe, Richard A; Delibegovic, Mirela; Wheate, Nial J

2016-06-01

We examined the relationship between executive functions and both factual and conceptual learning of science, specifically chemistry, in early adolescence. Sixty-three pupils in their second year of secondary school (aged 12-13 years) participated. Pupils completed tasks of working memory (Spatial Working Memory), inhibition (Stop-Signal), attention set-shifting (ID/ED), and planning (Stockings of Cambridge), from the CANTAB. They also participated in a chemistry teaching session, practical, and assessment on the topic of acids and alkalis designed specifically for this study. Executive function data were related to (1) the chemistry assessment which included aspects of factual and conceptual learning and (2) a recent school science exam. Correlational analyses between executive functions and both the chemistry assessment and science grades revealed that science achievements were significantly correlated with working memory. Linear regression analysis revealed that visuospatial working memory ability was predictive of chemistry performance. Interestingly, this relationship was observed solely in relation to the conceptual learning condition of the assessment highlighting the role of executive functions in understanding and applying knowledge about what is learned within science teaching. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Memory for reputational trait information: is social-emotional information processing less flexible in old age?

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Giang, Trang; Mund, Iris; Buchner, Axel

2013-12-01

How do younger and older adults remember reputational trait information about other people? In the present study, trustworthy-looking and untrustworthy-looking faces were paired with cooperation or cheating in a cooperation game. In a surprise source-memory test, participants were asked to rate the likability of the faces, and were required to remember whether the faces were associated with negative or positive outcomes. The social expectations of younger and older adults were clearly affected by a priori facial trustworthiness. Facial trustworthiness was associated with high cooperation-game investments, high likability ratings, and a tendency toward guessing that a face belonged to a cooperator instead of a cheater in both age groups. Consistent with previous results showing that emotional memory is spared from age-related decline, memory for the association between faces and emotional reputational information was well preserved in older adults. However, younger adults used a flexible encoding strategy to remember the social interaction partners. Source-memory was best for information that violated their (positive) expectations. Older adults, in contrast, showed a uniform memory bias for negative social information; their memory performance was not modulated by their expectations. This finding suggests that older adults are less likely to adjust their encoding strategies to their social expectations than younger adults. This may be in line with older adults' motivational goals to avoid risks in social interactions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Identity modulates short-term memory for facial emotion.

PubMed

Galster, Murray; Kahana, Michael J; Wilson, Hugh R; Sekuler, Robert

2009-12-01

For some time, the relationship between processing of facial expression and facial identity has been in dispute. Using realistic synthetic faces, we reexamined this relationship for both perception and short-term memory. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to identify whether the emotional expression on a probe stimulus face matched the emotional expression on either of two remembered faces that they had just seen. The results showed that identity strongly influenced recognition short-term memory for emotional expression. In Experiment 2, subjects' similarity/dissimilarity judgments were transformed by multidimensional scaling (MDS) into a 2-D description of the faces' perceptual representations. Distances among stimuli in the MDS representation, which showed a strong linkage of emotional expression and facial identity, were good predictors of correct and false recognitions obtained previously in Experiment 1. The convergence of the results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that the overall structure and configuration of faces' perceptual representations may parallel their representation in short-term memory and that facial identity modulates the representation of facial emotion, both in perception and in memory. The stimuli from this study may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Appearance-Based Inferences Bias Source Memory

PubMed Central

Cassidy, Brittany S.; Zebrowitz, Leslie A.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2012-01-01

Previous research varying the trustworthiness of appearance has demonstrated that facial characteristics contribute to source memory. Two studies extended this work by investigating the contribution to source memory of babyfaceness, a facial quality known to elicit strong spontaneous trait inferences. Young adult participants viewed younger and older babyfaced and mature-faced individuals paired with sentences that were either congruent or incongruent with the target's facial characteristics. Identifying a source as dominant or submissive was least accurate when participants chose between a target whose behavior was incongruent with facial characteristics and a lure whose face mismatched the target in appearance, but matched the source memory question. In Study 1, this effect held true when identifying older sources, but not own-age, younger sources. When task difficulty was increased in Study 2, the relationship between face-behavior congruence and lure facial characteristics persisted, but it was not moderated by target age even though participants continued to correctly identify fewer older than younger sources. Taken together, these results indicate that trait expectations associated with variations in facial maturity can bias source memory for both own- and other-age faces, although own-age faces are less vulnerable to this bias, as shown in the moderation by task difficulty. PMID:22806429

A new face of sleep: The impact of post-learning sleep on recognition memory for face-name associations

PubMed Central

Maurer, Leonie; Zitting, Kirsi-Marja; Elliott, Kieran; Czeisler, Charles A.; Ronda, Joseph M.; Duffy, Jeanne F.

2015-01-01

Sleep has been demonstrated to improve consolidation of many types of new memories. However, few prior studies have examined how sleep impacts learning of face-name associations. The recognition of a new face along with the associated name is an important human cognitive skill. Here we investigated whether post-presentation sleep impacts recognition memory of new face-name associations in healthy adults. Fourteen participants were tested twice. Each time, they were presented 20 photos of faces with a corresponding name. Twelve hours later, they were shown each face twice, once with the correct and once with an incorrect name, and asked if each face-name combination was correct and to rate their confidence. In one condition the 12-hour interval between presentation and recall included an 8-hour nighttime sleep opportunity (“Sleep”), while in the other condition they remained awake (“Wake”). There were more correct and highly confident correct responses when the interval between presentation and recall included a sleep opportunity, although improvement between the “Wake” and “Sleep” conditions was not related to duration of sleep or any sleep stage. These data suggest that a nighttime sleep opportunity improves the ability to correctly recognize face-name associations. Further studies investigating the mechanism of this improvement are important, as this finding has implications for individuals with sleep disturbances and/or memory impairments. PMID:26549626

A new face of sleep: The impact of post-learning sleep on recognition memory for face-name associations.

PubMed

Maurer, Leonie; Zitting, Kirsi-Marja; Elliott, Kieran; Czeisler, Charles A; Ronda, Joseph M; Duffy, Jeanne F

2015-12-01

Sleep has been demonstrated to improve consolidation of many types of new memories. However, few prior studies have examined how sleep impacts learning of face-name associations. The recognition of a new face along with the associated name is an important human cognitive skill. Here we investigated whether post-presentation sleep impacts recognition memory of new face-name associations in healthy adults. Fourteen participants were tested twice. Each time, they were presented 20 photos of faces with a corresponding name. Twelve hours later, they were shown each face twice, once with the correct and once with an incorrect name, and asked if each face-name combination was correct and to rate their confidence. In one condition the 12-h interval between presentation and recall included an 8-h nighttime sleep opportunity ("Sleep"), while in the other condition they remained awake ("Wake"). There were more correct and highly confident correct responses when the interval between presentation and recall included a sleep opportunity, although improvement between the "Wake" and "Sleep" conditions was not related to duration of sleep or any sleep stage. These data suggest that a nighttime sleep opportunity improves the ability to correctly recognize face-name associations. Further studies investigating the mechanism of this improvement are important, as this finding has implications for individuals with sleep disturbances and/or memory impairments. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Recognition memory for low- and high-frequency-filtered emotional faces: Low spatial frequencies drive emotional memory enhancement, whereas high spatial frequencies drive the emotion-induced recognition bias.

PubMed

Rohr, Michaela; Tröger, Johannes; Michely, Nils; Uhde, Alarith; Wentura, Dirk

2017-07-01

This article deals with two well-documented phenomena regarding emotional stimuli: emotional memory enhancement-that is, better long-term memory for emotional than for neutral stimuli-and the emotion-induced recognition bias-that is, a more liberal response criterion for emotional than for neutral stimuli. Studies on visual emotion perception and attention suggest that emotion-related processes can be modulated by means of spatial-frequency filtering of the presented emotional stimuli. Specifically, low spatial frequencies are assumed to play a primary role for the influence of emotion on attention and judgment. Given this theoretical background, we investigated whether spatial-frequency filtering also impacts (1) the memory advantage for emotional faces and (2) the emotion-induced recognition bias, in a series of old/new recognition experiments. Participants completed incidental-learning tasks with high- (HSF) and low- (LSF) spatial-frequency-filtered emotional and neutral faces. The results of the surprise recognition tests showed a clear memory advantage for emotional stimuli. Most importantly, the emotional memory enhancement was significantly larger for face images containing only low-frequency information (LSF faces) than for HSF faces across all experiments, suggesting that LSF information plays a critical role in this effect, whereas the emotion-induced recognition bias was found only for HSF stimuli. We discuss our findings in terms of both the traditional account of different processing pathways for HSF and LSF information and a stimulus features account. The double dissociation in the results favors the latter account-that is, an explanation in terms of differences in the characteristics of HSF and LSF stimuli.

Mild cognitive impairment: applicability of research criteria in a memory clinic and characterization of cognitive profile.

PubMed

Alladi, Suvarna; Arnold, Robert; Mitchell, Joanna; Nestor, Peter J; Hodges, John R

2006-04-01

We explored the applicability of recently proposed research criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in a memory clinic and changes in case definition related to which memory tests are used and the status of general cognitive function in MCI. A total of 166 consecutive GP referrals to the Cambridge Memory Clinic underwent comprehensive neuropsychological and psychiatric evaluation. Of 166 cases, 42 were excluded (significant depression 8, established dementia 29 and other disorders 5). Of 124 non-demented, non-depressed patients, 72 fulfilled Petersen's criteria for amnestic MCI based upon verbal memory performance [the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT)] and 90 met criteria if performance on verbal and/or non-verbal memory tests [the Rey figure recall or the Paired Associates Learning test (PAL)] was considered. Of the 90 broadly defined MCI cases, only 25 had pure amnesia: other subtle semantic and/or attention deficits were typically present. A further 12 were classed as non-amnestic MCI and 22 as 'worried well'. Definition of MCI varies considerably dependent upon the tests used for case definition. The majority have other cognitive deficits despite normal performance on the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) and intact activities of daily living (ADL) and fit within multi-domain MCI. Pure amnesic MCI is rare.

Face-specific and domain-general visual processing deficits in children with developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Dalrymple, Kirsten A; Elison, Jed T; Duchaine, Brad

2017-02-01

Evidence suggests that face and object recognition depend on distinct neural circuitry within the visual system. Work with adults with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) demonstrates that some individuals have preserved object recognition despite severe face recognition deficits. This face selectivity in adults with DP indicates that face- and object-processing systems can develop independently, but it is unclear at what point in development these mechanisms are separable. Determining when individuals with DP first show dissociations between faces and objects is one means to address this question. In the current study, we investigated face and object processing in six children with DP (5-12-years-old). Each child was assessed with one face perception test, two different face memory tests, and two object memory tests that were matched to the face memory tests in format and difficulty. Scores from the DP children on the matched face and object tasks were compared to within-subject data from age-matched controls. Four of the six DP children, including the 5-year-old, showed evidence of face-specific deficits, while one child appeared to have more general visual-processing deficits. The remaining child had inconsistent results. The presence of face-specific deficits in children with DP suggests that face and object perception depend on dissociable processes in childhood.

The role of reduced working memory storage and processing resources in the associative memory deficit of older adults: simulation studies with younger adults.

PubMed

Hara, Yoko; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe

2015-01-01

Previous research indicates that relative to younger adults, older adults show a larger decline in long-term memory (LTM) for associations than for the components that make up these associations. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether we can impair associative memory performance in young adults by reducing their working memory (WM) resources, hence providing potential clues regarding the underlying causes of the associative memory deficit in older adults. With two experiments, we investigated whether we can reduce younger adults' long-term associative memory using secondary tasks in which either storage or processing WM loads were manipulated, while participants learned name-face pairs and then remembered the names, the faces, and the name-face associations. Results show that reducing either the storage or the processing resources of WM produced performance patterns of an associative long-term memory deficit in young adults. Furthermore, younger adults' associative memory deficit was a function of their performance on a working memory span task. These results indicate that one potential reason older adults have an associative deficit is a reduction in their WM resources but further research is needed to assess the mechanisms involved in age-related associative memory deficits.

Orienting to face expression during encoding improves men's recognition of own gender faces.

PubMed

Fulton, Erika K; Bulluck, Megan; Hertzog, Christopher

2015-10-01

It is unclear why women have superior episodic memory of faces, but the benefit may be partially the result of women engaging in superior processing of facial expressions. Therefore, we hypothesized that orienting instructions to attend to facial expression at encoding would significantly improve men's memory of faces and possibly reduce gender differences. We directed 203 college students (122 women) to study 120 faces under instructions to orient to either the person's gender or their emotional expression. They later took a recognition test of these faces by either judging whether they had previously studied the same person or that person with the exact same expression; the latter test evaluated recollection of specific facial details. Orienting to facial expressions during encoding significantly improved men's recognition of own-gender faces and eliminated the advantage that women had for male faces under gender orienting instructions. Although gender differences in spontaneous strategy use when orienting to faces cannot fully account for gender differences in face recognition, orienting men to facial expression during encoding is one way to significantly improve their episodic memory for male faces. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

I owe you: age-related similarities and differences in associative memory for gains and losses.

PubMed

Castel, Alan D; Friedman, Michael C; McGillivray, Shannon; Flores, Cynthia C; Murayama, Kou; Kerr, Tyson; Drolet, Aimee

2016-09-01

Older adults often experience associative memory impairments but can sometimes remember important information. The current experiments investigate potential age-related similarities and differences associate memory for gains and losses. Younger and older participants were presented with faces and associated dollar amounts, which indicated how much money the person "owed" the participant, and were later given a cued recall test for the dollar amount. Experiment 1 examined face-dollar amount pairs while Experiment 2 included negative dollar amounts to examine both gains and losses. While younger adults recalled more information relative to older adults, both groups were more accurate in recalling the correct value associated with high-value faces compared to lower-value faces and remembered gist-information about the values. However, negative values (losses) did not have a strong impact on recall among older adults versus younger adults, illustrating important associative memory differences between younger and older adults.

I Owe You: Age-Related Similarities and Differences in Associative Memory for Gains and Losses

PubMed Central

Castel, Alan D.; Friedman, Michael C.; McGillivray, Shannon; Flores, Cynthia C.; Murayama, Kou; Kerr, Tyson; Drolet, Aimee

2016-01-01

Older adults often experience associative memory impairments but can sometimes remember important information. The current experiments investigate potential age-related similarities and differences associate memory for gains and losses. Younger and older participants were presented with faces and associated dollar amounts, which indicated how much money the person “owed” the participant, and were later given a cued recall test for the dollar amount. Experiment 1 examined face-dollar amount pairs while Experiment 2 included negative dollar amounts to examine both gains and losses. While younger adults recalled more information relative to older adults, both groups were more accurate in recalling the correct value associated with high value faces compared to lower value faces and remembered gist-information about the values. However, negative values (losses) did not have a strong impact on recall among older adults versus younger adults, illustrating important associative memory differences between younger and older adults. PMID:26847137

Memory Effects of Speech and Gesture Binding: Cortical and Hippocampal Activation in Relation to Subsequent Memory Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Straube, Benjamin; Green, Antonia; Weis, Susanne; Chatterjee, Anjan; Tilo, Kircher

2009-01-01

In human face-to-face communication, the content of speech is often illustrated by coverbal gestures. Behavioral evidence suggests that gestures provide advantages in the comprehension and memory of speech. Yet, how the human brain integrates abstract auditory and visual information into a common representation is not known. Our study investigates…

Structural brain correlates of associative memory in older adults.

PubMed

Becker, Nina; Laukka, Erika J; Kalpouzos, Grégoria; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Bäckman, Lars; Brehmer, Yvonne

2015-09-01

Associative memory involves binding two or more items into a coherent memory episode. Relative to memory for single items, associative memory declines greatly in aging. However, older individuals vary substantially in their ability to memorize associative information. Although functional studies link associative memory to the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and prefrontal cortex (PFC), little is known about how volumetric differences in MTL and PFC might contribute to individual differences in associative memory. We investigated regional gray-matter volumes related to individual differences in associative memory in a sample of healthy older adults (n=54; age=60years). To differentiate item from associative memory, participants intentionally learned face-scene picture pairs before performing a recognition task that included single faces, scenes, and face-scene pairs. Gray-matter volumes were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry region-of-interest (ROI) analyses. To examine volumetric differences specifically for associative memory, item memory was controlled for in the analyses. Behavioral results revealed large variability in associative memory that mainly originated from differences in false-alarm rates. Moreover, associative memory was independent of individuals' ability to remember single items. Older adults with better associative memory showed larger gray-matter volumes primarily in regions of the left and right lateral PFC. These findings provide evidence for the importance of PFC in intentional learning of associations, likely because of its involvement in organizational and strategic processes that distinguish older adults with good from those with poor associative memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Verbal overshadowing of visual memories: some things are better left unsaid.

PubMed

Schooler, J W; Engstler-Schooler, T Y

1990-01-01

It is widely believed that verbal processing generally improves memory performance. However, in a series of six experiments, verbalizing the appearance of previously seen visual stimuli impaired subsequent recognition performance. In Experiment 1, subjects viewed a videotape including a salient individual. Later, some subjects described the individual's face. Subjects who verbalized the face performed less well on a subsequent recognition test than control subjects who did not engage in memory verbalization. The results of Experiment 2 replicated those of Experiment 1 and further clarified the effect of memory verbalization by demonstrating that visualization does not impair face recognition. In Experiments 3 and 4 we explored the hypothesis that memory verbalization impairs memory for stimuli that are difficult to put into words. In Experiment 3 memory impairment followed the verbalization of a different visual stimulus: color. In Experiment 4 marginal memory improvement followed the verbalization of a verbal stimulus: a brief spoken statement. In Experiments 5 and 6 the source of verbally induced memory impairment was explored. The results of Experiment 5 suggested that the impairment does not reflect a temporary verbal set, but rather indicates relatively long-lasting memory interference. Finally, Experiment 6 demonstrated that limiting subjects' time to make recognition decisions alleviates the impairment, suggesting that memory verbalization overshadows but does not eradicate the original visual memory. This collection of results is consistent with a recording interference hypothesis: verbalizing a visual memory may produce a verbally biased memory representation that can interfere with the application of the original visual memory.

Implicit face prototype learning from geometric information.

PubMed

Or, Charles C-F; Wilson, Hugh R

2013-04-19

There is evidence that humans implicitly learn an average or prototype of previously studied faces, as the unseen face prototype is falsely recognized as having been learned (Solso & McCarthy, 1981). Here we investigated the extent and nature of face prototype formation where observers' memory was tested after they studied synthetic faces defined purely in geometric terms in a multidimensional face space. We found a strong prototype effect: The basic results showed that the unseen prototype averaged from the studied faces was falsely identified as learned at a rate of 86.3%, whereas individual studied faces were identified correctly 66.3% of the time and the distractors were incorrectly identified as having been learned only 32.4% of the time. This prototype learning lasted at least 1 week. Face prototype learning occurred even when the studied faces were further from the unseen prototype than the median variation in the population. Prototype memory formation was evident in addition to memory formation of studied face exemplars as demonstrated in our models. Additional studies showed that the prototype effect can be generalized across viewpoints, and head shape and internal features separately contribute to prototype formation. Thus, implicit face prototype extraction in a multidimensional space is a very general aspect of geometric face learning. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Familiar Person Recognition: Is Autonoetic Consciousness More Likely to Accompany Face Recognition Than Voice Recognition?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barsics, Catherine; Brédart, Serge

2010-11-01

Autonoetic consciousness is a fundamental property of human memory, enabling us to experience mental time travel, to recollect past events with a feeling of self-involvement, and to project ourselves in the future. Autonoetic consciousness is a characteristic of episodic memory. By contrast, awareness of the past associated with a mere feeling of familiarity or knowing relies on noetic consciousness, depending on semantic memory integrity. Present research was aimed at evaluating whether conscious recollection of episodic memories is more likely to occur following the recognition of a familiar face than following the recognition of a familiar voice. Recall of semantic information (biographical information) was also assessed. Previous studies that investigated the recall of biographical information following person recognition used faces and voices of famous people as stimuli. In this study, the participants were presented with personally familiar people's voices and faces, thus avoiding the presence of identity cues in the spoken extracts and allowing a stricter control of frequency exposure with both types of stimuli (voices and faces). In the present study, the rate of retrieved episodic memories, associated with autonoetic awareness, was significantly higher from familiar faces than familiar voices even though the level of overall recognition was similar for both these stimuli domains. The same pattern was observed regarding semantic information retrieval. These results and their implications for current Interactive Activation and Competition person recognition models are discussed.

Active retrieval facilitates across-episode binding by modulating the content of memory

PubMed Central

Bridge, Donna J.; Voss, Joel L.

2014-01-01

The contents of memory can be updated when information from the current episode is bound with content retrieved from previous episodes. Little is known regarding factors that determine the memory content that is subject to this across-episode binding. We tested whether across-episode binding preferentially occurs for memory content that is currently “active” and identified relevant neural correlates. After studying objects at specific locations on scene backgrounds, subjects performed one of two retrieval tasks for the objects on different scene backgrounds. In an active condition, subjects recalled object locations, whereas subjects merely dragged objects to predetermined locations in a passive condition. Immediately following each object-location retrieval event, a novel face appeared on a blank screen. We hypothesized that the original episode content would be active in memory during face encoding in the active condition, but not in the passive condition (despite seeing the same content in both conditions). A ramification of the active condition would thus be preferential binding of original episode content to novel faces, with no such across-episode binding in the passive condition. Indeed, memory for faces was better when tested on the original background scenes in the active relative to passive condition, indicating that original episode content was bound with the active condition faces, whereas this occurred to a lesser extent for the passive condition faces. Likewise, early-onset negative ERP effects reflected binding of the face to the original episode content in the active but not the passive condition. In contrast, binding in the passive condition occurred only when faces were physically displayed on the original scenes during recognition testing, and a very similar early-onset negative ERP effect signaled binding in this condition. ERP correlates of binding were thus similar for across-episode and within-episode binding (and were distinct from other encoding and retrieval ERP signals in both cases), indicating that active retrieval modulated when binding occurred, not the nature of the binding process per se. These results suggest that active retrieval promotes binding of new information with contents of memory, whereas without active retrieval, these unrelated pieces of information might be bound only when they are physically paired. PMID:25173711

Emotion Words: Adding Face Value.

PubMed

Fugate, Jennifer M B; Gendron, Maria; Nakashima, Satoshi F; Barrett, Lisa Feldman

2017-06-12

Despite a growing number of studies suggesting that emotion words affect perceptual judgments of emotional stimuli, little is known about how emotion words affect perceptual memory for emotional faces. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested how emotion words (compared with control words) affected participants' abilities to select a target emotional face from among distractor faces. Participants were generally more likely to false alarm to distractor emotional faces when primed with an emotion word congruent with the face (compared with a control word). Moreover, participants showed both decreased sensitivity (d') to discriminate between target and distractor faces, as well as altered response biases (c; more likely to answer "yes") when primed with an emotion word (compared with a control word). In Experiment 3 we showed that emotion words had more of an effect on perceptual memory judgments when the structural information in the target face was limited, as well as when participants were only able to categorize the face with a partially congruent emotion word. The overall results are consistent with the idea that emotion words affect the encoding of emotional faces in perceptual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Expectancy effects in source memory: how moving to a bad neighborhood can change your memory.

PubMed

Kroneisen, Meike; Woehe, Larissa; Rausch, Leonie Sophie

2015-02-01

Enhanced memory for cheaters could be suited to avoid social exchange situations in which we run the risk of getting exploited by others. Several experiments demonstrated that we have better source memory for faces combined with negative rather than positive behavior (Bell & Buchner, Memory & Cognition, 38, 29-41, 2010) or for cheaters and cooperators showing unexpected behavior (Bell, Buchner, Kroneisen, Giang, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 1512-1529, 2012). In the present study, we compared two groups: Group 1 just saw faces combined with aggressive, prosocial or neutral behavior descriptions, but got no further information, whereas group 2 was explicitly told that they would now see the behavior descriptions of very aggressive and unsocial persons. To measure old-new discrimination, source memory, and guessing biases separately, we used a multinomial model. When having no expectancies about the behavior of the presented people, enhanced source memory for aggressive persons was found. In comparison, source memory for faces combined with prosocial behavior descriptions was significantly higher in the group expecting only aggressive persons. These findings can be attributed to a mechanism that focuses on expectancy-incongruent information, representing a more flexible and therefore efficient memory strategy for remembering exchange-relevant information.

Destination memory in social interaction: better memory for older than for younger destinations in normal aging?

PubMed

El Haj, Mohamad; Raffard, Stéphane; Fasotti, Luciano; Allain, Philippe

2018-05-01

Destination memory, a memory component allowing the attribution of information to its appropriate receiver (e.g., to whom did I lend my pen?), is compromised in normal aging. The present paper investigated whether older adults might show better memory for older destinations than for younger destinations. This hypothesis is based on empirical research showing better memory for older faces than for younger faces in older adults. Forty-one older adults and 44 younger adults were asked to tell proverbs to older and younger destinations (i.e., coloured faces). On a later recognition test, participants had to decide whether they had previously told some proverb to an older/younger destination or not. Prior to this task, participants reported their frequency of contact with other-age groups. The results showed lower destination memory in older adults than in younger adults. Interestingly, older adults displayed better memory for older than for younger destinations. The opposite pattern was seen in younger adults. The low memory for younger destinations, as observed in older adults, was significantly correlated with limited exposure to younger individuals. These findings suggest that for older adults, the social experience can play a crucial role in the destination memory, at least as far as exposure to other-age groups is concerned.

Wada testing reveals frontal lateralization for the memorization of words and faces.

PubMed

Kelley, W M; Ojemann, J G; Wetzel, R D; Derdeyn, C P; Moran, C J; Cross, D T; Dowling, J L; Miller, J W; Petersen, S E

2002-01-01

Neuroimaging studies have suggested that specific regions of the frontal and medial temporal cortex are engaged during memory formation. Further, there is specialization across these regions such that verbal materials appear to preferentially engage the left regions while nonverbal materials primarily engage the right regions. An open question, however, has been to what extent frontal regions contribute to successful memory formation. The present study investigates this question using a reversible lesion technique known as the Wada test. Patients memorized words and unfamiliar faces while portions of their left and right hemispheres were temporarily anesthetized with sodium amytal. Subsequent memory tests revealed that faces were remembered better than words following left-hemisphere anesthesia, whereas words were remembered better than faces following right-hemisphere anesthesia. Importantly, inspection of the circulation affected by the amytal further suggests that these memory impairments did not result from direct anesthetization of the medial temporal regions. Taken in the context of the imaging findings, these results suggest that frontal regions may also contribute to memory formation in normal performance.

Object perception is selectively slowed by a visually similar working memory load.

PubMed

Robinson, Alan; Manzi, Alberto; Triesch, Jochen

2008-12-22

The capacity of visual working memory has been extensively characterized, but little work has investigated how occupying visual memory influences other aspects of cognition and perception. Here we show a novel effect: maintaining an item in visual working memory slows processing of similar visual stimuli during the maintenance period. Subjects judged the gender of computer rendered faces or the naturalness of body postures while maintaining different visual memory loads. We found that when stimuli of the same class (faces or bodies) were maintained in memory, perceptual judgments were slowed. Interestingly, this is the opposite of what would be predicted from traditional priming. Our results suggest there is interference between visual working memory and perception, caused by visual similarity between new perceptual input and items already encoded in memory.

Individual differences in false memory from misinformation: cognitive factors.

PubMed

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Loftus, Elizabeth F; Lin, Chongde; He, Qinghua; Chen, Chunhui; Li, He; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhonglin; Dong, Qi

2010-07-01

This research investigated the cognitive correlates of false memories that are induced by the misinformation paradigm. A large sample of Chinese college students (N=436) participated in a misinformation procedure and also took a battery of cognitive tests. Results revealed sizable and systematic individual differences in false memory arising from exposure to misinformation. False memories were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of intelligence (measured with Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), perception (Motor-Free Visual Perception Test, Change Blindness, and Tone Discrimination), memory (Wechsler Memory Scales and 2-back Working Memory tasks), and face judgement (Face Recognition and Facial Expression Recognition). These findings suggest that people with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities might be more susceptible to the misinformation effect.

Deficits in long-term recognition memory reveal dissociated subtypes in congenital prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Stollhoff, Rainer; Jost, Jürgen; Elze, Tobias; Kennerknecht, Ingo

2011-01-25

The study investigates long-term recognition memory in congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a lifelong impairment in face identification that is present from birth. Previous investigations of processing deficits in CP have mostly relied on short-term recognition tests to estimate the scope and severity of individual deficits. We firstly report on a controlled test of long-term (one year) recognition memory for faces and objects conducted with a large group of participants with CP. Long-term recognition memory is significantly impaired in eight CP participants (CPs). In all but one case, this deficit was selective to faces and didn't extend to intra-class recognition of object stimuli. In a test of famous face recognition, long-term recognition deficits were less pronounced, even after accounting for differences in media consumption between controls and CPs. Secondly, we combined test results on long-term and short-term recognition of faces and objects, and found a large heterogeneity in severity and scope of individual deficits. Analysis of the observed heterogeneity revealed a dissociation of CP into subtypes with a homogeneous phenotypical profile. Thirdly, we found that among CPs self-assessment of real-life difficulties, based on a standardized questionnaire, and experimentally assessed face recognition deficits are strongly correlated. Our results demonstrate that controlled tests of long-term recognition memory are needed to fully assess face recognition deficits in CP. Based on controlled and comprehensive experimental testing, CP can be dissociated into subtypes with a homogeneous phenotypical profile. The CP subtypes identified align with those found in prosopagnosia caused by cortical lesions; they can be interpreted with respect to a hierarchical neural system for face perception.

Deficits in Long-Term Recognition Memory Reveal Dissociated Subtypes in Congenital Prosopagnosia

PubMed Central

Stollhoff, Rainer; Jost, Jürgen; Elze, Tobias; Kennerknecht, Ingo

2011-01-01

The study investigates long-term recognition memory in congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a lifelong impairment in face identification that is present from birth. Previous investigations of processing deficits in CP have mostly relied on short-term recognition tests to estimate the scope and severity of individual deficits. We firstly report on a controlled test of long-term (one year) recognition memory for faces and objects conducted with a large group of participants with CP. Long-term recognition memory is significantly impaired in eight CP participants (CPs). In all but one case, this deficit was selective to faces and didn't extend to intra-class recognition of object stimuli. In a test of famous face recognition, long-term recognition deficits were less pronounced, even after accounting for differences in media consumption between controls and CPs. Secondly, we combined test results on long-term and short-term recognition of faces and objects, and found a large heterogeneity in severity and scope of individual deficits. Analysis of the observed heterogeneity revealed a dissociation of CP into subtypes with a homogeneous phenotypical profile. Thirdly, we found that among CPs self-assessment of real-life difficulties, based on a standardized questionnaire, and experimentally assessed face recognition deficits are strongly correlated. Our results demonstrate that controlled tests of long-term recognition memory are needed to fully assess face recognition deficits in CP. Based on controlled and comprehensive experimental testing, CP can be dissociated into subtypes with a homogeneous phenotypical profile. The CP subtypes identified align with those found in prosopagnosia caused by cortical lesions; they can be interpreted with respect to a hierarchical neural system for face perception. PMID:21283572

Mnemonic strategies in older people: a comparison of errorless and errorful learning.

PubMed

Kessels, Roy P C; de Haan, Edward H F

2003-09-01

To compare the efficacy of errorless and errorful learning on memory performance in older people and young adults. Face-name association learning was examined in 18 older people and 16 young controls. Subjects were either prompted to guess the correct name during the presentation of photographs of unknown faces (errorful learning) or were instructed to study the face without guessing (errorless learning). The correct name was given after the presentation of each face in both task conditions. Uncued testing followed immediately after the two study phases and after a 10-minute delay. Older subjects had an overall lower memory performance and flatter learning curves compared to the young adults, regardless of task conditions. Also, errorless learning resulted in a higher accuracy than errorful learning, to an equal amount in both groups. Older people have difficulty in the encoding stages of face-name association learning, whereas retrieval is relatively unaffected. In addition, the prevention of errors occurring during learning results in a better memory performance, and is perhaps an effective strategy for coping with age-related memory decrement.

Evidence for a confidence-accuracy relationship in memory for same- and cross-race faces.

PubMed

Nguyen, Thao B; Pezdek, Kathy; Wixted, John T

2017-12-01

Discrimination accuracy is usually higher for same- than for cross-race faces, a phenomenon known as the cross-race effect (CRE). According to prior research, the CRE occurs because memories for same- and cross-race faces rely on qualitatively different processes. However, according to a continuous dual-process model of recognition memory, memories that rely on qualitatively different processes do not differ in recognition accuracy when confidence is equated. Thus, although there are differences in overall same- and cross-race discrimination accuracy, confidence-specific accuracy (i.e., recognition accuracy at a particular level of confidence) may not differ. We analysed datasets from four recognition memory studies on same- and cross-race faces to test this hypothesis. Confidence ratings reliably predicted recognition accuracy when performance was above chance levels (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) but not when performance was at chance levels (Experiment 4). Furthermore, at each level of confidence, confidence-specific accuracy for same- and cross-race faces did not significantly differ when overall performance was above chance levels (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) but significantly differed when overall performance was at chance levels (Experiment 4). Thus, under certain conditions, high-confidence same-race and cross-race identifications may be equally reliable.

Autobiographical memory, interpersonal problem solving, and suicidal behavior in adolescent inpatients.

PubMed

Arie, Miri; Apter, Alan; Orbach, Israel; Yefet, Yael; Zalsman, Gil; Zalzman, Gil

2008-01-01

The aim of the study was to test Williams' (Williams JMG. Depression and the specificity of autobiographical memory. In: Rubin D, ed. Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory. London: Cambridge University Press; 1996:244-267.) theory of suicidal behavior in adolescents and young adults by examining the relationship among suicidal behaviors, defective ability to retrieve specific autobiographical memories, impaired interpersonal problem solving, negative life events, repression, and hopelessness. Twenty-five suicidal adolescent and young adult inpatients (16.5 y +/- 2.5) were compared with 25 nonsuicidal adolescent and young adult inpatients (16.5 y +/- 2.5) and 25 healthy controls. Autobiographical memory was tested by a word association test; problem solving by the means-ends problem solving technique; negative life events by the Coddington scale; repression by the Life Style Index; hopelessness by the Beck scale; suicidal risk by the Plutchik scale, and suicide attempt by clinical history. Impairment in the ability to produce specific autobiographical memories, difficulties with interpersonal problem solving, negative life events, and repression were all associated with hopelessness and suicidal behavior. There were significant correlations among all the variables except for repression and negative life events. These findings support Williams' notion that generalized autobiographical memory is associated with deficits in interpersonal problem solving, negative life events, hopelessness, and suicidal behavior. The finding that defects in autobiographical memory are associated with suicidal behavior in adolescents and young adults may lead to improvements in the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy in this age group.

Effects of acute psychosocial stress on neural activity to emotional and neutral faces in a face recognition memory paradigm.

PubMed

Li, Shijia; Weerda, Riklef; Milde, Christopher; Wolf, Oliver T; Thiel, Christiane M

2014-12-01

Previous studies have shown that acute psychosocial stress impairs recognition of declarative memory and that emotional material is especially sensitive to this effect. Animal studies suggest a central role of the amygdala which modulates memory processes in hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and other brain areas. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural correlates of stress-induced modulation of emotional recognition memory in humans. Twenty-seven healthy, right-handed, non-smoker male volunteers performed an emotional face recognition task. During encoding, participants were presented with 50 fearful and 50 neutral faces. One hour later, they underwent either a stress (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control procedure outside the scanner which was followed immediately by the recognition session inside the scanner, where participants had to discriminate between 100 old and 50 new faces. Stress increased salivary cortisol, blood pressure and pulse, and decreased the mood of participants but did not impact recognition memory. BOLD data during recognition revealed a stress condition by emotion interaction in the left inferior frontal gyrus and right hippocampus which was due to a stress-induced increase of neural activity to fearful and a decrease to neutral faces. Functional connectivity analyses revealed a stress-induced increase in coupling between the right amygdala and the right fusiform gyrus, when processing fearful as compared to neutral faces. Our results provide evidence that acute psychosocial stress affects medial temporal and frontal brain areas differentially for neutral and emotional items, with a stress-induced privileged processing of emotional stimuli.

Enhanced old-new recognition and source memory for faces of cooperators and defectors in a social-dilemma game.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel; Musch, Jochen

2010-12-01

A popular assumption in evolutionary psychology is that the human mind comprises specialized cognitive modules for social exchange, including a module that serves to enhance memory for faces of cheaters. In the present study, participants played a trust game with computerized opponents, who either defected or cooperated. In a control condition, no interaction took place. In a surprise memory test, old-new recognition for faces and source memory for the associated cooperative or non-cooperative behavior were assessed. A multinomial model was used to measure old-new discrimination, source memory, and guessing biases separately. Inconsistent with the assumption of a memory mechanism that focuses exclusively on cheating, the present study showed enhanced old-new discrimination and source memory for both cooperators and defectors. Rarity of the behavior strategies within the experiment modulated source memory, but only when the differences in base rates were extreme. The findings can be attributed to a mechanism that focuses on exchange-relevant information and flexibly adapts to take into account the relative significance of this information in the encoding context, which may be more beneficial than focusing exclusively on cheaters. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

How generation affects source memory.

PubMed

Geghman, Kindiya D; Multhaup, Kristi S

2004-07-01

Generation effects (better memory for self-produced items than for provided items) typically occur in item memory. Jurica and Shimamura (1999) reported a negative generation effect in source memory, but their procedure did not test participants on the items they had generated. In Experiment 1, participants answered questions and read statements made by a face on a computer screen. The target word was unscrambled, or letters were filled in. Generation effects were found for target recall and source recognition (which person did which task). Experiment 2 extended these findings to a condition in which the external sources were two different faces. Generation had a positive effect on source memory, supporting an overlap in the underlying mechanisms of item and source memory.

Attention and Memory for Faces and Actions in Infancy: The Salience of Actions over Faces in Dynamic Events.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bahrick, Lorraine E.; Gogate, Lakshmi J.; Ruiz, Ivonne

2002-01-01

Three experiments investigated discrimination and memory of 5.5-month-olds for videotapes of women performing different activities (blowing bubbles, brushing hair, brushing teeth) or static displays after a 1-minute and a 7-week delay. Findings demonstrate the attentional salience of actions over faces in dynamic events to 5.5-month-olds. Findings…

Brain Region-Specific Expression of Genes Mapped within Quantitative Trait Loci for Behavioral Responsiveness to Acute Stress in Fisher 344 and Wistar Kyoto Male Rats (Open Access Postprint)

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-03-12

RGSC_3.4. Using the Integrative Genomics Viewer (Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts), we iden- tified the coding sequence variations between the...adrenal axis abnormalities and disturbances in brain metabolism resem- bling those in depressive states [74]. Ifna2 is also known to induce memory... psychological science a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. 2016; 4(1):17–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702615577470 PMID: 26958455

Cognitive mechanisms of false facial recognition in older adults.

PubMed

Edmonds, Emily C; Glisky, Elizabeth L; Bartlett, James C; Rapcsak, Steven Z

2012-03-01

Older adults show elevated false alarm rates on recognition memory tests involving faces in comparison to younger adults. It has been proposed that this age-related increase in false facial recognition reflects a deficit in recollection and a corresponding increase in the use of familiarity when making memory decisions. To test this hypothesis, we examined the performance of 40 older adults and 40 younger adults on a face recognition memory paradigm involving three different types of lures with varying levels of familiarity. A robust age effect was found, with older adults demonstrating a markedly heightened false alarm rate in comparison to younger adults for "familiarized lures" that were exact repetitions of faces encountered earlier in the experiment, but outside the study list, and therefore required accurate recollection of contextual information to reject. By contrast, there were no age differences in false alarms to "conjunction lures" that recombined parts of study list faces, or to entirely new faces. Overall, the pattern of false recognition errors observed in older adults was consistent with excessive reliance on a familiarity-based response strategy. Specifically, in the absence of recollection older adults appeared to base their memory decisions on item familiarity, as evidenced by a linear increase in false alarm rates with increasing familiarity of the lures. These findings support the notion that automatic memory processes such as familiarity remain invariant with age, while more controlled memory processes such as recollection show age-related decline.

The influence of banner advertisements on attention and memory: human faces with averted gaze can enhance advertising effectiveness

PubMed Central

Sajjacholapunt, Pitch; Ball, Linden J.

2014-01-01

Research suggests that banner advertisements used in online marketing are often overlooked, especially when positioned horizontally on webpages. Such inattention invariably gives rise to an inability to remember advertising brands and messages, undermining the effectiveness of this marketing method. Recent interest has focused on whether human faces within banner advertisements can increase attention to the information they contain, since the gaze cues conveyed by faces can influence where observers look. We report an experiment that investigated the efficacy of faces located in banner advertisements to enhance the attentional processing and memorability of banner contents. We tracked participants' eye movements when they examined webpages containing either bottom-right vertical banners or bottom-center horizontal banners. We also manipulated facial information such that banners either contained no face, a face with mutual gaze or a face with averted gaze. We additionally assessed people's memories for brands and advertising messages. Results indicated that relative to other conditions, the condition involving faces with averted gaze increased attention to the banner overall, as well as to the advertising text and product. Memorability of the brand and advertising message was also enhanced. Conversely, in the condition involving faces with mutual gaze, the focus of attention was localized more on the face region rather than on the text or product, weakening any memory benefits for the brand and advertising message. This detrimental impact of mutual gaze on attention to advertised products was especially marked for vertical banners. These results demonstrate that the inclusion of human faces with averted gaze in banner advertisements provides a promising means for marketers to increase the attention paid to such adverts, thereby enhancing memory for advertising information. PMID:24624104

The influence of banner advertisements on attention and memory: human faces with averted gaze can enhance advertising effectiveness.

PubMed

Sajjacholapunt, Pitch; Ball, Linden J

2014-01-01

Research suggests that banner advertisements used in online marketing are often overlooked, especially when positioned horizontally on webpages. Such inattention invariably gives rise to an inability to remember advertising brands and messages, undermining the effectiveness of this marketing method. Recent interest has focused on whether human faces within banner advertisements can increase attention to the information they contain, since the gaze cues conveyed by faces can influence where observers look. We report an experiment that investigated the efficacy of faces located in banner advertisements to enhance the attentional processing and memorability of banner contents. We tracked participants' eye movements when they examined webpages containing either bottom-right vertical banners or bottom-center horizontal banners. We also manipulated facial information such that banners either contained no face, a face with mutual gaze or a face with averted gaze. We additionally assessed people's memories for brands and advertising messages. Results indicated that relative to other conditions, the condition involving faces with averted gaze increased attention to the banner overall, as well as to the advertising text and product. Memorability of the brand and advertising message was also enhanced. Conversely, in the condition involving faces with mutual gaze, the focus of attention was localized more on the face region rather than on the text or product, weakening any memory benefits for the brand and advertising message. This detrimental impact of mutual gaze on attention to advertised products was especially marked for vertical banners. These results demonstrate that the inclusion of human faces with averted gaze in banner advertisements provides a promising means for marketers to increase the attention paid to such adverts, thereby enhancing memory for advertising information.

Memory reactivation during rapid eye movement sleep promotes its generalization and integration in cortical stores.

PubMed

Sterpenich, Virginie; Schmidt, Christina; Albouy, Geneviève; Matarazzo, Luca; Vanhaudenhuyse, Audrey; Boveroux, Pierre; Degueldre, Christian; Leclercq, Yves; Balteau, Evelyne; Collette, Fabienne; Luxen, André; Phillips, Christophe; Maquet, Pierre

2014-06-01

Memory reactivation appears to be a fundamental process in memory consolidation. In this study we tested the influence of memory reactivation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep on memory performance and brain responses at retrieval in healthy human participants. Fifty-six healthy subjects (28 women and 28 men, age [mean ± standard deviation]: 21.6 ± 2.2 y) participated in this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. Auditory cues were associated with pictures of faces during their encoding. These memory cues delivered during REM sleep enhanced subsequent accurate recollections but also false recognitions. These results suggest that reactivated memories interacted with semantically related representations, and induced new creative associations, which subsequently reduced the distinction between new and previously encoded exemplars. Cues had no effect if presented during stage 2 sleep, or if they were not associated with faces during encoding. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that following exposure to conditioned cues during REM sleep, responses to faces during retrieval were enhanced both in a visual area and in a cortical region of multisensory (auditory-visual) convergence. These results show that reactivating memories during REM sleep enhances cortical responses during retrieval, suggesting the integration of recent memories within cortical circuits, favoring the generalization and schematization of the information.

Dissociation of Short- and Long-Term Face Memory: Evidence from Long-Term Recency Effects in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bengner, T.; Malina, T.

2007-01-01

We tested whether memory deficits in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are better described by a single- or dual-store memory model. To this aim, we analyzed the influence of TLE and proactive interference (PI) on immediate and 24-h long-term recency effects during face recognition in 16 healthy participants and 18 right and 21 left non-surgical TLE…

Relational Memory Is Evident in Eye Movement Behavior despite the Use of Subliminal Testing Methods.

PubMed

Nickel, Allison E; Henke, Katharina; Hannula, Deborah E

2015-01-01

While it is generally agreed that perception can occur without awareness, there continues to be debate about the type of representational content that is accessible when awareness is minimized or eliminated. Most investigations that have addressed this issue evaluate access to well-learned representations. Far fewer studies have evaluated whether or not associations encountered just once prior to testing might also be accessed and influence behavior. Here, eye movements were used to examine whether or not memory for studied relationships is evident following the presentation of subliminal cues. Participants assigned to experimental or control groups studied scene-face pairs and test trials evaluated implicit and explicit memory for these pairs. Each test trial began with a subliminal scene cue, followed by three visible studied faces. For experimental group participants, one face was the studied associate of the scene (implicit test); for controls none were a match. Subsequently, the display containing a match was presented to both groups, but now it was preceded by a visible scene cue (explicit test). Eye movements were recorded and recognition memory responses were made. Participants in the experimental group looked disproportionately at matching faces on implicit test trials and participants from both groups looked disproportionately at matching faces on explicit test trials, even when that face had not been successfully identified as the associate. Critically, implicit memory-based viewing effects seemed not to depend on residual awareness of subliminal scene cues, as subjective and objective measures indicated that scenes were successfully masked from view. The reported outcomes indicate that memory for studied relationships can be expressed in eye movement behavior without awareness.

Working Memory Impairment in People with Williams Syndrome: Effects of Delay, Task and Stimuli

PubMed Central

O'Hearn, Kirsten; Courtney, Susan; Street, Whitney; Landau, Barbara

2009-01-01

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with impaired visuospatial representations subserved by the dorsal stream and relatively strong object recognition abilities subserved by the ventral stream. There is conflicting evidence on whether this uneven pattern extends to working memory (WM) in WS. The present studies provide a new perspective, testing WM for a single stimulus using a delayed recognition paradigm in individuals with WS and typically developing children matched for mental age (MA matches). In three experiments, participants judged whether a second stimulus ‘matched’ an initial sample, either in location or identity. We first examined memory for faces, houses and locations using a 5 s delay (Experiment 1) and a 2 s delay (Experiment 2). We then tested memory for human faces, houses, cat faces, and shoes with a 2 s delay using a new set of stimuli that were better controlled for expression, hairline and orientation (Experiment 3). With the 5 s delay (Experiment 1), the WS group was impaired overall compared to MA matches. While participants with WS tended to perform more poorly than MA matches with the 2 s delay, they also exhibited an uneven profile compared to MA matches. Face recognition was relatively preserved in WS with friendly faces (Experiment 2) but not when the faces had a neutral expression and were less natural looking (Experiment 3). Experiment 3 indicated that memory for object identity was relatively stronger than memory for location in WS. These findings reveal an overall WM impairment in WS that can be overcome under some conditions. Abnormalities in the parietal lobe/dorsal stream in WS may damage not only the representation of spatial location but also may impact WM for visual stimuli more generally. PMID:19084315

Relational Memory Is Evident in Eye Movement Behavior despite the Use of Subliminal Testing Methods

PubMed Central

Nickel, Allison E.; Henke, Katharina; Hannula, Deborah E.

2015-01-01

While it is generally agreed that perception can occur without awareness, there continues to be debate about the type of representational content that is accessible when awareness is minimized or eliminated. Most investigations that have addressed this issue evaluate access to well-learned representations. Far fewer studies have evaluated whether or not associations encountered just once prior to testing might also be accessed and influence behavior. Here, eye movements were used to examine whether or not memory for studied relationships is evident following the presentation of subliminal cues. Participants assigned to experimental or control groups studied scene-face pairs and test trials evaluated implicit and explicit memory for these pairs. Each test trial began with a subliminal scene cue, followed by three visible studied faces. For experimental group participants, one face was the studied associate of the scene (implicit test); for controls none were a match. Subsequently, the display containing a match was presented to both groups, but now it was preceded by a visible scene cue (explicit test). Eye movements were recorded and recognition memory responses were made. Participants in the experimental group looked disproportionately at matching faces on implicit test trials and participants from both groups looked disproportionately at matching faces on explicit test trials, even when that face had not been successfully identified as the associate. Critically, implicit memory-based viewing effects seemed not to depend on residual awareness of subliminal scene cues, as subjective and objective measures indicated that scenes were successfully masked from view. The reported outcomes indicate that memory for studied relationships can be expressed in eye movement behavior without awareness. PMID:26512726

Working memory impairment in people with Williams syndrome: effects of delay, task and stimuli.

PubMed

O'Hearn, Kirsten; Courtney, Susan; Street, Whitney; Landau, Barbara

2009-04-01

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with impaired visuospatial representations subserved by the dorsal stream and relatively strong object recognition abilities subserved by the ventral stream. There is conflicting evidence on whether this uneven pattern in WS extends to working memory (WM). The present studies provide a new perspective, testing WM for a single stimulus using a delayed recognition paradigm in individuals with WS and typically developing children matched for mental age (MA matches). In three experiments, participants judged whether a second stimulus 'matched' an initial sample, either in location or identity. We first examined memory for faces, houses and locations using a 5s delay (Experiment 1) and a 2s delay (Experiment 2). We then tested memory for human faces, houses, cat faces, and shoes with a 2s delay using a new set of stimuli that were better controlled for expression, hairline and orientation (Experiment 3). With the 5s delay (Experiment 1), the WS group was impaired overall compared to MA matches. While participants with WS tended to perform more poorly than MA matches with the 2s delay, they also exhibited an uneven profile compared to MA matches. Face recognition was relatively preserved in WS with friendly faces (Experiment 2) but not when the faces had a neutral expression and were less natural looking (Experiment 3). Experiment 3 indicated that memory for object identity was relatively stronger than memory for location in WS. These findings reveal an overall WM impairment in WS that can be overcome under some conditions. Abnormalities in the parietal lobe/dorsal stream in WS may damage not only the representation of spatial location but may also impact WM for visual stimuli more generally.

Temporal distance and person memory: thinking about the future changes memory for the past.

PubMed

Wyer, Natalie A; Perfect, Timothy J; Pahl, Sabine

2010-06-01

Psychological distance has been shown to influence how people construe an event such that greater distance produces high-level construal (characterized by global or holistic processing) and lesser distance produces low-level construal (characterized by detailed or feature-based processing). The present research tested the hypothesis that construal level has carryover effects on how information about an event is retrieved from memory. Two experiments manipulated temporal distance and found that greater distance (high-level construal) improves face recognition and increases retrieval of the abstract features of an event, whereas lesser distance (low-level construal) impairs face recognition and increases retrieval of the concrete details of an event. The findings have implications for transfer-inappropriate processing accounts of face recognition and event memory, and suggest potential applications in forensic settings.

Physical Activity Is Positively Associated with Episodic Memory in Aging.

PubMed

Hayes, Scott M; Alosco, Michael L; Hayes, Jasmeet P; Cadden, Margaret; Peterson, Kristina M; Allsup, Kelly; Forman, Daniel E; Sperling, Reisa A; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-11-01

Aging is associated with performance reductions in executive function and episodic memory, although there is substantial individual variability in cognition among older adults. One factor that may be positively associated with cognition in aging is physical activity. To date, few studies have objectively assessed physical activity in young and older adults, and examined whether physical activity is differentially associated with cognition in aging. Young (n=29, age 18-31 years) and older adults (n=31, ages 55-82 years) completed standardized neuropsychological testing to assess executive function and episodic memory capacities. An experimental face-name relational memory task was administered to augment assessment of episodic memory. Physical activity (total step count and step rate) was objectively assessed using an accelerometer, and hierarchical regressions were used to evaluate relationships between cognition and physical activity. Older adults performed more poorly on tasks of executive function and episodic memory. Physical activity was positively associated with a composite measure of visual episodic memory and face-name memory accuracy in older adults. Physical activity associations with cognition were independent of sedentary behavior, which was negatively correlated with memory performance. Physical activity was not associated with cognitive performance in younger adults. Physical activity is positively associated with episodic memory performance in aging. The relationship appears to be strongest for face-name relational memory and visual episodic memory, likely attributable to the fact that these tasks make strong demands on the hippocampus. The results suggest that physical activity relates to cognition in older, but not younger adults.

Medial prefrontal-hippocampal connectivity during emotional memory encoding predicts individual differences in the loss of associative memory specificity.

PubMed

Berkers, Ruud M W J; Klumpers, Floris; Fernández, Guillén

2016-10-01

Emotionally charged items are often remembered better, whereas a paradoxical loss of specificity is found for associative emotional information (specific memory). The balance between specific and generalized emotional memories appears to show large individual differences, potentially related to differences in (the risk for) affective disorders that are characterized by 'overgeneralized' emotional memories. Here, we investigate the neural underpinnings of individual differences in emotional associative memory. A large group of healthy male participants were scanned while encoding associations of face-photographs and written occupational identities that were of either neutral ('driver') or negative ('murderer') valence. Subsequently, memory was tested by prompting participants to retrieve the occupational identities corresponding to each face. Whereas in both valence categories a similar amount of faces was labeled correctly with 'neutral' and 'negative' identities, (gist memory), specific associations were found to be less accurately remembered when the occupational identity was negative compared to neutral (specific memory). This pattern of results suggests reduced memory specificity for associations containing a negatively valenced component. The encoding of these negative associations was paired with a selective increase in medial prefrontal cortex activity and medial prefrontal-hippocampal connectivity. Individual differences in valence-specific neural connectivity were predictive of valence-specific reduction of memory specificity. The relationship between loss of emotional memory specificity and medial prefrontal-hippocampal connectivity is in line with the hypothesized role of a medial prefrontal-hippocampal circuit in regulating memory specificity, and warrants further investigations in individuals displaying 'overgeneralized' emotional memories. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The differential effects of emotional salience on direct associative and relational memory during a nap.

PubMed

Alger, Sara E; Payne, Jessica D

2016-12-01

Relational memories are formed from shared components between directly learned memory associations, flexibly linking learned information to better inform future judgments. Sleep has been found to facilitate both direct associative and relational memories. However, the impact of incorporating emotionally salient information into learned material and the interaction of emotional salience and sleep in facilitating both types of memory is unknown. Participants encoded two sets of picture pairs, with either emotionally negative or neutral objects paired with neutral faces. The same objects were present in both sets, paired with two different faces across the sets. Baseline memory for these directly paired associates was tested immediately after encoding, followed by either a 90-min nap opportunity or wakefulness. Five hours after learning, a surprise test assessed relational memory, the indirect association between two faces paired with the same object during encoding, followed by a retest of direct associative memory. Overall, negative information was remembered better than neutral for directly learned pairs. A nap facilitated both preservation of direct associative memories and formation of relational memories, compared to remaining awake. Interestingly, however, this sleep benefit was observed specifically for neutral directly paired associates, while both neutral and negative relational associations benefitted from a nap. Finally, REM sleep played opposing roles in neutral direct and relational associative memory formation, with more REM sleep leading to forgetting of direct associations but promoting relational associations, suggesting that, while not benefitting memory consolidation for directly learned details, REM sleep may foster the memory reorganization needed for relational memory.

Applying the attractor field model to social cognition: Perceptual discrimination is facilitated, but memory is impaired for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions.

PubMed

Corneille, Olivier; Hugenberg, Kurt; Potter, Timothy

2007-09-01

A new model of mental representation is applied to social cognition: the attractor field model. Using the model, the authors predicted and found a perceptual advantage but a memory disadvantage for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions. In Experiment 1, participants completed a same/different perceptual discrimination task involving morphed pairs of angry-to-happy Black and White faces. Pairs of faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions (i.e., happy Black, angry White) were more likely to be labeled as similar and were less likely to be accurately discriminated from one another than faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions (i.e., angry Black, happy White). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that objective discriminability of stimuli moderated the impact of attractor field effects on perceptual discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 3, participants completed a recognition task for angry and happy Black and White faces. Consistent with the attractor field model, memory accuracy was better for faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved

Local intensity area descriptor for facial recognition in ideal and noise conditions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tran, Chi-Kien; Tseng, Chin-Dar; Chao, Pei-Ju; Ting, Hui-Min; Chang, Liyun; Huang, Yu-Jie; Lee, Tsair-Fwu

2017-03-01

We propose a local texture descriptor, local intensity area descriptor (LIAD), which is applied for human facial recognition in ideal and noisy conditions. Each facial image is divided into small regions from which LIAD histograms are extracted and concatenated into a single feature vector to represent the facial image. The recognition is performed using a nearest neighbor classifier with histogram intersection and chi-square statistics as dissimilarity measures. Experiments were conducted with LIAD using the ORL database of faces (Olivetti Research Laboratory, Cambridge), the Face94 face database, the Georgia Tech face database, and the FERET database. The results demonstrated the improvement in accuracy of our proposed descriptor compared to conventional descriptors [local binary pattern (LBP), uniform LBP, local ternary pattern, histogram of oriented gradients, and local directional pattern]. Moreover, the proposed descriptor was less sensitive to noise and had low histogram dimensionality. Thus, it is expected to be a powerful texture descriptor that can be used for various computer vision problems.

Face matching impairment in developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

White, David; Rivolta, Davide; Burton, A Mike; Al-Janabi, Shahd; Palermo, Romina

2017-02-01

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly referred to as 'face blindness', a term that implies a perceptual basis to the condition. However, DP presents as a deficit in face recognition and is diagnosed using memory-based tasks. Here, we test face identification ability in six people with DP, who are severely impaired on face memory tasks, using tasks that do not rely on memory. First, we compared DP to control participants on a standardized test of unfamiliar face matching using facial images taken on the same day and under standardized studio conditions (Glasgow Face Matching Test; GFMT). Scores for DP participants did not differ from normative accuracy scores on the GFMT. Second, we tested face matching performance on a test created using images that were sourced from the Internet and so varied substantially due to changes in viewing conditions and in a person's appearance (Local Heroes Test; LHT). DP participants showed significantly poorer matching accuracy on the LHT than control participants, for both unfamiliar and familiar face matching. Interestingly, this deficit is specific to 'match' trials, suggesting that people with DP may have particular difficulty in matching images of the same person that contain natural day-to-day variations in appearance. We discuss these results in the broader context of individual differences in face matching ability.

Catechol-O-methyltransferase Val(158)Met association with parahippocampal physiology during memory encoding in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Di Giorgio, A; Caforio, G; Blasi, G; Taurisano, P; Fazio, L; Romano, R; Ursini, G; Gelao, B; Bianco, L Lo; Papazacharias, A; Sinibaldi, L; Popolizio, T; Bellomo, A; Bertolino, A

2011-08-01

Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met has been associated with activity of the mesial temporal lobe during episodic memory and it may weakly increase risk for schizophrenia. However, how this variant affects parahippocampal and hippocampal physiology when dopamine transmission is perturbed is unclear. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of the COMT Val158Met genotype on parahippocampal and hippocampal physiology during encoding of recognition memory in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy subjects. Using blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we studied 28 patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy subjects matched for a series of sociodemographic and genetic variables while they performed a recognition memory task. We found that healthy subjects had greater parahippocampal and hippocampal activity during memory encoding compared to patients with schizophrenia. We also found different activity of the parahippocampal region between healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia as a function of the COMT genotype, in that the predicted COMT Met allele dose effect had an opposite direction in controls and patients. Our results demonstrate a COMT Val158Met genotype by diagnosis interaction in parahippocampal activity during memory encoding and may suggest that modulation of dopamine signaling interacts with other disease-related processes in determining the phenotype of parahippocampal physiology in schizophrenia. © Cambridge University Press 2010

Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction.

PubMed

Foerde, Karin; Knowlton, Barbara J; Poldrack, Russell A

2006-08-01

Different forms of learning and memory depend on functionally and anatomically separable neural circuits [Squire, L. R. (1992) Psychol. Rev. 99, 195-231]. Declarative memory relies on a medial temporal lobe system, whereas habit learning relies on the striatum [Cohen, N. J. & Eichenbaum, H. (1993) Memory, Amnesia, and the Hippocampal System (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)]. How these systems are engaged to optimize learning and behavior is not clear. Here, we present results from functional neuroimaging showing that the presence of a demanding secondary task during learning modulates the degree to which subjects solve a problem using either declarative memory or habit learning. Dual-task conditions did not reduce accuracy but reduced the amount of declarative learning about the task. Medial temporal lobe activity was correlated with task performance and declarative knowledge after learning under single-task conditions, whereas performance was correlated with striatal activity after dual-task learning conditions. These results demonstrate a fundamental difference in these memory systems in their sensitivity to concurrent distraction. The results are consistent with the notion that declarative and habit learning compete to mediate task performance, and they suggest that the presence of distraction can bias this competition. These results have implications for learning in multitask situations, suggesting that, even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.

Fractionation of memory in medial temporal lobe amnesia.

PubMed

Bird, Chris M; Shallice, Tim; Cipolotti, Lisa

2007-03-25

We report a comprehensive investigation of the anterograde memory functions of two patients with memory impairments (RH and JC). RH had neuroradiological evidence of apparently selective right-sided hippocampal damage and an intact cognitive profile apart from selective memory impairments. JC, had neuroradiological evidence of bilateral hippocampal damage following anoxia due to cardiac arrest. He had anomic and "executive" difficulties in addition to a global amnesia, suggesting atrophy extending beyond hippocampal regions. Their performance is compared with that of a previously reported hippocampal amnesic patient who showed preserved recollection and familiarity for faces in the context of severe verbal and topographical memory impairment [VC; Cipolotti, L., Bird, C., Good, T., Macmanus, D., Rudge, P., & Shallice, T. (2006). Recollection and familiarity in dense hippocampal amnesia: A case study. Neuropsychologia, 44, 489-506.] The patients were administered experimental tests using verbal (words) and two types of non-verbal materials (faces and buildings). Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to estimate the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance on the experimental tests. RH had preserved verbal recognition memory. Interestingly, her face recognition memory was also spared, whilst topographical recognition memory was impaired. JC was impaired for all types of verbal and non-verbal materials. In both patients, deficits in recollection were invariably associated with deficits in familiarity. JC's data demonstrate the need for a comprehensive cognitive investigation in patients with apparently selective hippocampal damage following anoxia. The data from RH suggest that the right hippocampus is necessary for recollection and familiarity for topographical materials, whilst the left hippocampus is sufficient to underpin these processes for at least some types of verbal materials. Face recognition memory may be adequately subserved by areas outside of the hippocampus.

Performing prototype distortion tasks requires no contribution from the explicit memory systems: evidence from amnesic MCI patients in a new experimental paradigm.

PubMed

Zannino, Gian Daniele; Perri, Roberta; Zabberoni, Silvia; Caltagirone, Carlo; Marra, Camillo; Carlesimo, Giovanni A

2012-10-01

Evidence shows that amnesic patients are able to categorize new exemplars drawn from the same prototype as in previously encountered items. It is still unclear, however, whether this ability is due to a spared implicit learning system or residual explicit memory and/or working memory resources. In this study, we used a new paradigm devised expressly to rule out any possible contribution of episodic and working memory in performing a prototype distortion task. We enrolled patients with amnesic MCI and Normal Controls. Our paradigm consisted of a study phase and a test phase; two-thirds of the participants performed the study phase and all participants performed the test phase. In the study phase, participants had to judge how pleasant morphed faces, drawn from a single prototype, seemed to them. Half of the participants were shown faces drawn from the A-prototype and half from the B-prototype. A- and B-faces were opposite in a morphing space with a neutral human face at the center. In the test phase, participants had to judge the regularity of faces they had never seen before. Three different types of faces were shown in the test phase, that is, A-, B-, or neutral-faces. We expected that implicit learning of the category boundaries would lead to a category-specific increase in perceived regularity. The results confirmed our predictions. In fact, trained subjects (compared with subjects who did not undergo the study phase) assigned higher regularity scores to new faces drawn from the same prototype as the faces seen during training, and they gave lower regularity scores to new faces drawn from the opposite prototype. This effect was super imposable across subjects' groups. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Active retrieval facilitates across-episode binding by modulating the content of memory.

PubMed

Bridge, Donna J; Voss, Joel L

2014-10-01

The contents of memory can be updated when information from the current episode is bound with content retrieved from previous episodes. Little is known regarding factors that determine the memory content that is subject to this across-episode binding. We tested whether across-episode binding preferentially occurs for memory content that is currently "active" and identified relevant neural correlates. After studying objects at specific locations on scene backgrounds, subjects performed one of two retrieval tasks for the objects on different scene backgrounds. In an active condition, subjects recalled object locations, whereas subjects merely dragged objects to predetermined locations in a passive condition. Immediately following each object-location retrieval event, a novel face appeared on a blank screen. We hypothesized that the original episode content would be active in memory during face encoding in the active condition, but not in the passive condition (despite seeing the same content in both conditions). A ramification of the active condition would thus be preferential binding of original episode content to novel faces, with no such across-episode binding in the passive condition. Indeed, memory for faces was better when tested on the original background scenes in the active relative to passive condition, indicating that original episode content was bound with the active condition faces, whereas this occurred to a lesser extent for the passive condition faces. Likewise, early-onset negative ERP effects reflected binding of the face to the original episode content in the active but not the passive condition. In contrast, binding in the passive condition occurred only when faces were physically displayed on the original scenes during recognition testing, and a very similar early-onset negative ERP effect signaled binding in this condition. ERP correlates of binding were thus similar for across-episode and within-episode binding (and were distinct from other encoding and retrieval ERP signals in both cases), indicating that active retrieval modulated when binding occurred, not the nature of the binding process per se. These results suggest that active retrieval promotes binding of new information with contents of memory, whereas without active retrieval, these unrelated pieces of information might be bound only when they are physically paired. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Anterior medial prefrontal cortex exhibits activation during task preparation but deactivation during task execution.

PubMed

Koshino, Hideya; Minamoto, Takehiro; Ikeda, Takashi; Osaka, Mariko; Otsuka, Yuki; Osaka, Naoyuki

2011-01-01

The anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) exhibits activation during some cognitive tasks, including episodic memory, reasoning, attention, multitasking, task sets, decision making, mentalizing, and processing of self-referenced information. However, the medial part of anterior PFC is part of the default mode network (DMN), which shows deactivation during various goal-directed cognitive tasks compared to a resting baseline. One possible factor for this pattern is that activity in the anterior medial PFC (MPFC) is affected by dynamic allocation of attentional resources depending on task demands. We investigated this possibility using an event related fMRI with a face working memory task. Sixteen students participated in a single fMRI session. They were asked to form a task set to remember the faces (Face memory condition) or to ignore them (No face memory condition), then they were given 6 seconds of preparation period before the onset of the face stimuli. During this 6-second period, four single digits were presented one at a time at the center of the display, and participants were asked to add them and to remember the final answer. When participants formed a task set to remember faces, the anterior MPFC exhibited activation during a task preparation period but deactivation during a task execution period within a single trial. The results suggest that the anterior MPFC plays a role in task set formation but is not involved in execution of the face working memory task. Therefore, when attentional resources are allocated to other brain regions during task execution, the anterior MPFC shows deactivation. The results suggest that activation and deactivation in the anterior MPFC are affected by dynamic allocation of processing resources across different phases of processing.

Anterior Medial Prefrontal Cortex Exhibits Activation during Task Preparation but Deactivation during Task Execution

PubMed Central

Koshino, Hideya; Minamoto, Takehiro; Ikeda, Takashi; Osaka, Mariko; Otsuka, Yuki; Osaka, Naoyuki

2011-01-01

Background The anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) exhibits activation during some cognitive tasks, including episodic memory, reasoning, attention, multitasking, task sets, decision making, mentalizing, and processing of self-referenced information. However, the medial part of anterior PFC is part of the default mode network (DMN), which shows deactivation during various goal-directed cognitive tasks compared to a resting baseline. One possible factor for this pattern is that activity in the anterior medial PFC (MPFC) is affected by dynamic allocation of attentional resources depending on task demands. We investigated this possibility using an event related fMRI with a face working memory task. Methodology/Principal Findings Sixteen students participated in a single fMRI session. They were asked to form a task set to remember the faces (Face memory condition) or to ignore them (No face memory condition), then they were given 6 seconds of preparation period before the onset of the face stimuli. During this 6-second period, four single digits were presented one at a time at the center of the display, and participants were asked to add them and to remember the final answer. When participants formed a task set to remember faces, the anterior MPFC exhibited activation during a task preparation period but deactivation during a task execution period within a single trial. Conclusions/Significance The results suggest that the anterior MPFC plays a role in task set formation but is not involved in execution of the face working memory task. Therefore, when attentional resources are allocated to other brain regions during task execution, the anterior MPFC shows deactivation. The results suggest that activation and deactivation in the anterior MPFC are affected by dynamic allocation of processing resources across different phases of processing. PMID:21829668

Memory deficits for facial identity in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

PubMed

Savaskan, Egemen; Summermatter, Daniel; Schroeder, Clemens; Schächinger, Hartmut

2018-01-01

Faces are among the most relevant social stimuli revealing an encounter's identity and actual emotional state. Deficits in facial recognition may be an early sign of cognitive decline leading to social deficits. The main objective of the present study is to investigate if individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment show recognition deficits in facial identity. Thirty-seven individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment, multiple-domain (15 female; age: 75±8 yrs.) and forty-one healthy volunteers (24 female; age 71±6 yrs.) participated. All participants completed a human portrait memory test presenting unfamiliar faces with happy and angry emotional expressions. Five and thirty minutes later, old and new neutral faces were presented, and discrimination sensitivity (d') and response bias (C) were assessed as signal detection parameters of cued facial identity recognition. Memory performance was lower in amnestic mild cognitive impairment as compared to control subjects, mainly because of an altered response bias towards an increased false alarm rate (favoring false OLD ascription of NEW items). In both groups, memory performance declined between the early and later testing session, and was always better for acquired happy than angry faces. Facial identity memory is impaired in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Liberalization of the response bias may reflect a socially motivated compensatory mechanism maintaining an almost identical recognition hit rate of OLD faces in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Human memory manipulated: dissociating factors contributing to MTL activity, an fMRI study.

PubMed

Pustina, Dorian; Gizewski, Elke; Forsting, Michael; Daum, Irene; Suchan, Boris

2012-04-01

Memory processes are mainly studied with subjective rating procedures. We used a morphing procedure to objectively manipulate the similarity of target stimuli. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, nineteen subjects performed a encoding and recognition task on face and scene stimuli, varying the degree of manipulation of previously studied targets at 0%, 20%, 40% or 60%. Analyses were performed with parametric modulations for objective stimulus status (morphing level), subjective memory (confidence rating), and reaction times (RTs). Results showed that medial temporal lobe (MTL) activity can be best explained by a combination of subjective and objective factors. Memory success is associated with activity modulation in the hippocampus both for faces and for scenes. Memory failures correlated with lower hippocampal activity for scenes, but not for faces. Activity changed during retrieval on similar areas activated during encoding. There was a considerable impact of RTs on memory-related areas. Objective perceptual identity correlated with activity in the left MTL, while subjective memory experience correlated with activity in the right MTL for both types of material. Overall, the results indicate that MTL activity is heterogeneous, showing both linear and non-linear activity, depending on the factor analyzed. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Concentrating on beauty: sexual selection and sociospatial memory.

PubMed

Becker, D Vaughn; Kenrick, Douglas T; Guerin, Stephen; Maner, Jon K

2005-12-01

In three experiments, location memory for faces was examined using a computer version of the matching game Concentration. Findings suggested that physical attractiveness led to more efficient matching for female faces but not for male faces. Study 3 revealed this interaction despite allowing participants to initially see, attend to, and match the attractive male faces in the first few turns. Analysis of matching errors suggested that, compared to other targets, attractive women were less confusable with one another. Results are discussed in terms of the different functions that attractiveness serves for men and women.

The Spanish version of Face-Name Associative Memory Exam (S-FNAME) performance is related to amyloid burden in Subjective Cognitive Decline.

PubMed

Sanabria, Angela; Alegret, Montserrat; Rodriguez-Gomez, Octavio; Valero, Sergi; Sotolongo-Grau, Oscar; Monté-Rubio, Gemma; Abdelnour, Carla; Espinosa, Ana; Ortega, Gemma; Perez-Cordon, Alba; Gailhajanet, Anna; Hernandez, Isabel; Rosende-Roca, Maitee; Vargas, Liliana; Mauleon, Ana; Sanchez, Domingo; Martin, Elvira; Rentz, Dorene M; Lomeña, Francisco; Ruiz, Agustin; Tarraga, Lluis; Boada, Merce

2018-02-28

The Face-Name Associative Memory Exam (FNAME) is a paired associative memory test created to detect memory deficits in individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD). Worse performance on FNAME in cognitively healthy individuals were found related to higher amyloid beta (Aβ) burden measured with Positron-Emission-Tomography using 11 C-PiB (PiB-PET). We previously reported normative data of a Spanish version of FNAME (S-FNAME) in cognitively healthy Spanish-speaking subjects. The aim of the present study was to determine whether performance on S-FNAME was associated with Aβ burden in subjective cognitive decline (SCD) individuals. 200 SCD subjects received neurological and neuropsychological assessments, including the S-FNAME and the Word List task from the Wechsler-Memory-Scale-III (WMS-III). Moreover, they received an MRI and (18)F-Florbetaben Positron-Emission-Tomography (FBB-PET) to measure Aβ burden. Three cognitive factor composites were derived for the episodic memory measures (face-name [SFN-N], face-occupation [SFN-O] and WMS-III) to determine whether episodic memory performance was related to Aβ deposition. Higher global Aβ deposition was significantly related to worse performance on SFN-N but not with SFN-O or WMS-III Composite. Moreover, worse SFN-N performance was significantly related to higher Aβ deposition in bilateral  Posterior Cingulate Cortex. The S-FNAME may be a promising neuropsychological tool for detecting SCD individuals with preclinical AD.

Gender differences in memory processing of female facial attractiveness: evidence from event-related potentials.

PubMed

Zhang, Yan; Wei, Bin; Zhao, Peiqiong; Zheng, Minxiao; Zhang, Lili

2016-06-01

High rates of agreement in the judgment of facial attractiveness suggest universal principles of beauty. This study investigated gender differences in recognition memory processing of female facial attractiveness. Thirty-four Chinese heterosexual participants (17 females, 17 males) aged 18-24 years (mean age 21.63 ± 1.51 years) participated in the experiment which used event-related potentials (ERPs) based on a study-test paradigm. The behavioral data results showed that both men and women had significantly higher accuracy rates for attractive faces than for unattractive faces, but men reacted faster to unattractive faces. Gender differences on ERPs showed that attractive faces elicited larger early components such as P1, N170, and P2 in men than in women. The results indicated that the effects of recognition bias during memory processing modulated by female facial attractiveness are greater for men than women. Behavioral and ERP evidences indicate that men and women differ in their attentional adhesion to attractive female faces; different mating-related motives may guide the selective processing of attractive men and women. These findings establish a contribution of gender differences on female facial attractiveness during memory processing from an evolutionary perspective.

Prospective memory functioning among ecstasy/polydrug users: evidence from the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test (CAMPROMPT).

PubMed

Hadjiefthyvoulou, Florentia; Fisk, John E; Montgomery, Catharine; Bridges, Nikola

2011-06-01

Prospective memory (PM) deficits in recreational drug users have been documented in recent years. However, the assessment of PM has largely been restricted to self-reported measures that fail to capture the distinction between event-based and time-based PM. The aim of the present study is to address this limitation. Extending our previous research, we augmented the range laboratory measures of PM by employing the CAMPROMPT test battery to investigate the impact of illicit drug use on prospective remembering in a sample of cannabis only, ecstasy/polydrug and non-users of illicit drugs, separating event and time-based PM performance. We also administered measures of executive function and retrospective memory in order to establish whether ecstasy/polydrug deficits in PM were mediated by group differences in these processes. Ecstasy/polydrug users performed significantly worse on both event and time-based prospective memory tasks in comparison to both cannabis only and non-user groups. Furthermore, it was found that across the whole sample, better retrospective memory and executive functioning was associated with superior PM performance. Nevertheless, this association did not mediate the drug-related effects that were observed. Consistent with our previous study, recreational use of cocaine was linked to PM deficits. PM deficits have again been found among ecstasy/polydrug users, which appear to be unrelated to group differences in executive function and retrospective memory. However, the possibility that these are attributable to cocaine use cannot be excluded.

Recognition Memory for Words and Faces Before and After Temporal Lobectomy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naugle, Richard I.; And Others

1994-01-01

To assess the sensitivity of Warrington's Recognition Memory Test "words" and "faces" subtests to lateralized temporal lobe seizure foci and effects of epilepsy surgery, 27 left- and 39 right-temporal lobectomy patients were tested before and after surgery. Conditions under which misclassification is most likely are discussed.…

Face identity matching is selectively impaired in developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Fisher, Katie; Towler, John; Eimer, Martin

2017-04-01

Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) have severe face recognition deficits, but the mechanisms that are responsible for these deficits have not yet been fully identified. We assessed whether the activation of visual working memory for individual faces is selectively impaired in DP. Twelve DPs and twelve age-matched control participants were tested in a task where they reported whether successively presented faces showed the same or two different individuals, and another task where they judged whether the faces showed the same or different facial expressions. Repetitions versus changes of the other currently irrelevant attribute were varied independently. DPs showed impaired performance in the identity task, but performed at the same level as controls in the expression task. An electrophysiological marker for the activation of visual face memory by identity matches (N250r component) was strongly attenuated in the DP group, and the size of this attenuation was correlated with poor performance in a standardized face recognition test. Results demonstrate an identity-specific deficit of visual face memory in DPs. Their reduced sensitivity to identity matches in the presence of other image changes could result from earlier deficits in the perceptual extraction of image-invariant visual identity cues from face images. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Influences of Appearance-Behavior Congruity on Memory and Social Judgments

PubMed Central

Cassidy, Brittany S.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2014-01-01

Prior work shows that appearance-behavior congruity impacts memory and evaluations. Building upon prior work, we assessed influences of appearance-behavior congruity on source memory and judgment strength to illustrate ways congruity effects permeate social cognition. We paired faces varying on trustworthiness with valenced behaviors to create congruent and incongruent face-behavior pairs. Young and older adults remembered congruent pairs better than incongruent, but both were remembered better than pairs with faces rated average in appearance. This suggests that multiple, even conflicting, valenced cues improve memory over receiving fewer cues. Consistent with our manipulation of facial trustworthiness, congruity effects were present in the strength of trustworthiness-related but not dominance judgments. Subtle age differences emerged in congruity effects when learning about others, with older adults showing effects for approach judgments given both high and low arousal behaviors. Young adults had congruity effects for approach, prosociality, and trustworthiness judgments, given high arousal behaviors only. These findings deepen our understanding of how appearance-behavior congruity impacts memory for and evaluations of others. PMID:25180615

Long-Term Memory for Odors: Influences of Familiarity and Identification Across 64 Days

PubMed Central

Jönsson, Fredrik U.; Willander, Johan; Sikström, Sverker; Larsson, Maria

2015-01-01

Few studies have investigated long-term odor recognition memory, although some early observations suggested that the forgetting rate of olfactory representations is slower than for other sensory modalities. This study investigated recognition memory across 64 days for high and low familiar odors and faces. Memory was assessed in 83 young participants at 4 occasions; immediate, 4, 16, and 64 days after encoding. The results indicated significant forgetting for odors and faces across the 64 days. The forgetting functions for the 2 modalities were not fundamentally different. Moreover, high familiar odors and faces were better remembered than low familiar ones, indicating an important role of semantic knowledge on recognition proficiency for both modalities. Although odor recognition was significantly better than chance at the 64 days testing, memory for the low familiar odors was relatively poor. Also, the results indicated that odor identification consistency across sessions, irrespective of accuracy, was positively related to successful recognition. PMID:25740304

Influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on memory and social judgements.

PubMed

Cassidy, Brittany S; Gutchess, Angela H

2015-01-01

Prior work shows that appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory and evaluations. Building upon prior work, we assessed influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on source memory and judgement strength to illustrate ways congruity effects permeate social cognition. We paired faces varying on trustworthiness with valenced behaviours to create congruent and incongruent face-behaviour pairs. Young and older adults remembered congruent pairs better than incongruent, but both were remembered better than pairs with faces rated average in appearance. This suggests that multiple, even conflicting, valenced cues improve memory over receiving fewer cues. Consistent with our manipulation of facial trustworthiness, congruity effects were present in the strength of trustworthiness-related but not dominance judgements. Subtle age differences emerged in congruity effects when learning about others, with older adults showing effects for approach judgements given both high and low arousal behaviours. Young adults had congruity effects for approach, prosociality and trustworthiness judgements, given high arousal behaviours only. These findings deepen our understanding of how appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory for and evaluations of others.

Reconstructing Perceived and Retrieved Faces from Activity Patterns in Lateral Parietal Cortex.

PubMed

Lee, Hongmi; Kuhl, Brice A

2016-06-01

Recent findings suggest that the contents of memory encoding and retrieval can be decoded from the angular gyrus (ANG), a subregion of posterior lateral parietal cortex. However, typical decoding approaches provide little insight into the nature of ANG content representations. Here, we tested whether complex, multidimensional stimuli (faces) could be reconstructed from ANG by predicting underlying face components from fMRI activity patterns in humans. Using an approach inspired by computer vision methods for face recognition, we applied principal component analysis to a large set of face images to generate eigenfaces. We then modeled relationships between eigenface values and patterns of fMRI activity. Activity patterns evoked by individual faces were then used to generate predicted eigenface values, which could be transformed into reconstructions of individual faces. We show that visually perceived faces were reliably reconstructed from activity patterns in occipitotemporal cortex and several lateral parietal subregions, including ANG. Subjective assessment of reconstructed faces revealed specific sources of information (e.g., affect and skin color) that were successfully reconstructed in ANG. Strikingly, we also found that a model trained on ANG activity patterns during face perception was able to successfully reconstruct an independent set of face images that were held in memory. Together, these findings provide compelling evidence that ANG forms complex, stimulus-specific representations that are reflected in activity patterns evoked during perception and remembering. Neuroimaging studies have consistently implicated lateral parietal cortex in episodic remembering, but the functional contributions of lateral parietal cortex to memory remain a topic of debate. Here, we used an innovative form of fMRI pattern analysis to test whether lateral parietal cortex actively represents the contents of memory. Using a large set of human face images, we first extracted latent face components (eigenfaces). We then used machine learning algorithms to predict face components from fMRI activity patterns and, ultimately, to reconstruct images of individual faces. We show that activity patterns in a subregion of lateral parietal cortex, the angular gyrus, supported successful reconstruction of perceived and remembered faces, confirming a role for this region in actively representing remembered content. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/366069-14$15.00/0.

Physical Activity Is Positively Associated with Episodic Memory in Aging

PubMed Central

Hayes, Scott M.; Alosco, Michael L.; Hayes, Jasmeet P.; Cadden, Margaret; Peterson, Kristina M.; Allsup, Kelly; Forman, Daniel E.; Sperling, Reisa A.; Verfaellie, Mieke

2016-01-01

Aging is associated with performance reductions in executive function and episodic memory, although there is substantial individual variability in cognition among older adults. One factor that may be positively associated with cognition in aging is physical activity. To date, few studies have objectively assessed physical activity in young and older adults, and examined whether physical activity is differentially associated with cognition in aging. Young (n = 29, age 18–31 years) and older adults (n = 31, ages 55–82 years) completed standardized neuropsychological testing to assess executive function and episodic memory capacities. An experimental face-name relational memory task was administered to augment assessment of episodic memory. Physical activity (total step count and step rate) was objectively assessed using an accelerometer, and hierarchical regressions were used to evaluate relationships between cognition and physical activity. Older adults performed more poorly on tasks of executive function and episodic memory. Physical activity was positively associated with a composite measure of visual episodic memory and face-name memory accuracy in older adults. Physical activity associations with cognition were independent of sedentary behavior, which was negatively correlated with memory performance. Physical activity was not associated with cognitive performance in younger adults. Physical activity is positively associated with episodic memory performance in aging. The relationship appears to be strongest for face-name relational memory and visual episodic memory, likely attributable to the fact that these tasks make strong demands on the hippocampus. The results suggest that physical activity relates to cognition in older, but not younger adults. PMID:26581790

Computer Graphics Special Issue on 1992 Symposium on Interactive 3D graphics Held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 29 March-1 April 1992

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-01-01

it * five representations of a desk: 1) a highly detailed desk with ,m ~ ~ ~ ~ Dlla L.._ ’ ,,,e ".. l, faces subdivided along gradients of radiosity , 2...created by our implementation, including timings and polygon using radiosity approaches [9, 61, by summing the counts. contributions of an approximating...and Winget, J. Improving Radiosity Solutions Through the Use of Analytically Determined Form-Factors. Proc. SIGGRAPH 󈨝 Plate 4, illuminated by both

The Dynamics of Memory: Context-Dependent Updating

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hupbach, Almut; Hardt, Oliver; Gomez, Rebecca; Nadel, Lynn

2008-01-01

Understanding the dynamics of memory change is one of the current challenges facing cognitive neuroscience. Recent animal work on memory reconsolidation shows that memories can be altered long after acquisition. When reactivated, memories can be modified and require a restabilization (reconsolidation) process. We recently extended this finding to…

Memory for friends or foes: the social context of past encounters with faces modulates their subsequent neural traces in the brain.

PubMed

Vrticka, Pascal; Andersson, Frédéric; Sander, David; Vuilleumier, Patrik

2009-01-01

Every day we encounter new people, interact with them, and form person impressions based on quick and automatic inferences from minimal contextual information. Previous studies have identified an extensive network of brain areas involved in familiar face recognition, but there is little evidence to date concerning the neural bases of negative vs. positive person impressions. In the present study, participants were repeatedly exposed to 16 unfamiliar face identities within a pseudo-interactive game context to generate a perception of either "friends" or "foes". Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was then performed during an old/new memory task to assess any difference in brain responses to these now familiar face identities, relative to unfamiliar faces. Importantly, whereas facial expressions were always emotional (either smiling or angry) during the encoding phase, they were always neutral during the memory task. Our results reveal that several brain regions involved in familiar face recognition, including fusiform cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus, and amygdala, plus additional areas involved in motivational control such as caudate and anterior cingulate cortex, were differentially modulated as a function of a previous encounter, and generally more activated when faces were perceived as "foes" rather than "friends". These findings underscore that a key dimension of social judgments, based on past impressions of who may be supportive or hostile, may lead to long-lasting effects on memory for faces and thus influence affective reactions to people during a subsequent encounter even in a different (neutral) context.

The acute and medium-term effects of treatment with electroconvulsive therapy on memory in patients with major depressive disorder.

PubMed

Maric, N P; Stojanovic, Z; Andric, S; Soldatovic, I; Dolic, M; Spiric, Z

2016-03-01

Current literature provides insufficient information on the degree of cognitive impairment during and after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), mostly due to the fact that applied tests lacked sensitivity and flexibility. Our goal was to evaluate cognitive functioning in adult depressed patients treated with bi-temporal ECT, using tests sensitive for detection of possible acute and medium-term memory changes. Thirty adult patients with major depressive disorder, treated with a course of bi-temporal ECT, underwent clinical and cognitive measurements three times: at baseline, immediately after a course of ECT, and 1 month later. For cognition assessment, we used learning and visual, spatial and figural memory tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). Bi-temporal ECT has proven to be an effective treatment. The linear mixed model, used to analyze changes in depression severity and patients' cognitive performances over time and to assess dynamic correlations between aforementioned features, did not show any significant memory impairment as a potential acute or medium-term ECT effect. However, it yielded significant improvement on visual memory and learning at the follow-up, which positively correlated with the improvement of depression. Good progress is being made in the search for ECT-related acute and medium-term cognitive side-effects by using the tests sensitive to detect memory dysfunction with parallel forms of the tasks (to counter practice effects on repeat testing). Our results on learning and memory in relation to ECT during treatment of depression did not bring forth any prolonged and significant bi-temporal ECT-related memory deficit.

“Distracters” Do Not Always Distract: Visual Working Memory for Angry Faces is Enhanced by Incidental Emotional Words

PubMed Central

Jackson, Margaret C.; Linden, David E. J.; Raymond, Jane E.

2012-01-01

We are often required to filter out distraction in order to focus on a primary task during which working memory (WM) is engaged. Previous research has shown that negative versus neutral distracters presented during a visual WM maintenance period significantly impair memory for neutral information. However, the contents of WM are often also emotional in nature. The question we address here is how incidental information might impact upon visual WM when both this and the memory items contain emotional information. We presented emotional versus neutral words during the maintenance interval of an emotional visual WM faces task. Participants encoded two angry or happy faces into WM, and several seconds into a 9 s maintenance period a negative, positive, or neutral word was flashed on the screen three times. A single neutral test face was presented for retrieval with a face identity that was either present or absent in the preceding study array. WM for angry face identities was significantly better when an emotional (negative or positive) versus neutral (or no) word was presented. In contrast, WM for happy face identities was not significantly affected by word valence. These findings suggest that the presence of emotion within an intervening stimulus boosts the emotional value of threat-related information maintained in visual WM and thus improves performance. In addition, we show that incidental events that are emotional in nature do not always distract from an ongoing WM task. PMID:23112782

The effect of encoding strategy on the neural correlates of memory for faces.

PubMed

Bernstein, Lori J; Beig, Sania; Siegenthaler, Amy L; Grady, Cheryl L

2002-01-01

Encoding and recognition of unfamiliar faces in young adults were examined using positron emission tomography to determine whether different encoding strategies would lead to encoding/retrieval differences in brain activity. Three types of encoding were compared: a 'deep' task (judging pleasantness/unpleasantness), a 'shallow' task (judging right/left orientation), and an intentional learning task in which subjects were instructed to learn the faces for a subsequent memory test but were not provided with a specific strategy. Memory for all faces was tested with an old/new recognition test. A modest behavioral effect was obtained, with deeply-encoded faces being recognized more accurately than shallowly-encoded or intentionally-learned faces. Regardless of encoding strategy, encoding activated a primarily ventral system including bilateral temporal and fusiform regions and left prefrontal cortices, whereas recognition activated a primarily dorsal set of regions including right prefrontal and parietal areas. Within encoding, the type of strategy produced different brain activity patterns, with deep encoding being characterized by left amygdala and left anterior cingulate activation. There was no effect of encoding strategy on brain activity during the recognition conditions. Posterior fusiform gyrus activation was related to better recognition accuracy in those conditions encouraging perceptual strategies, whereas activity in left frontal and temporal areas correlated with better performance during the 'deep' condition. Results highlight three important aspects of face memory: (1) the effect of encoding strategy was seen only at encoding and not at recognition; (2) left inferior prefrontal cortex was engaged during encoding of faces regardless of strategy; and (3) differential activity in fusiform gyrus was found, suggesting that activity in this area is not only a result of automatic face processing but is modulated by controlled processes.

Aging and attentional biases for emotional faces.

PubMed

Mather, Mara; Carstensen, Laura L

2003-09-01

We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhibit this attentional bias. Interactions of age and valence were also found for memory for the faces, with older adults remembering positive better than negative faces. These findings reveal that in their initial attention, older adults avoid negative information. This attentional bias is consistent with older adults' generally better emotional well-being and their tendency to remember negative less well than positive information.

Incidental memory for faces in children with different genetic subtypes of Prader-Willi syndrome.

PubMed

Key, Alexandra P; Dykens, Elisabeth M

2017-06-01

The present study examined the effects of genetic subtype on social memory in children (7-16 years) with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). Visual event-related potentials (ERPs) during a passive viewing task were used to compare incidental memory traces for repeated vs single presentations of previously unfamiliar social (faces) and nonsocial (houses) images in 15 children with the deletion subtype and 13 children with maternal uniparental disomy (mUPD). While all participants perceived faces as different from houses (N170 responses), repeated faces elicited more positive ERP amplitudes ('old/new' effect, 250-500ms) only in children with the deletion subtype. Conversely, the mUPD group demonstrated reduced amplitudes suggestive of habituation to the repeated faces. ERP responses to repeated vs single house images did not differ in either group. The results suggest that faces hold different motivational value for individuals with the deletion vs mUPD subtype of PWS and could contribute to the explanation of subtype differences in the psychiatric symptoms, including autism symptomatology. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Memory for faces and objects by deaf and hearing signers and hearing nonsigners.

PubMed

Arnold, P; Murray, C

1998-07-01

The memory of 11 deaf and 11 hearing British Sign Language users and 11 hearing nonsigners for pictures of faces of and verbalizable objects was measured using the game Concentration. The three groups performed at the same level for the objects. In contrast the deaf signers were better for faces than the hearing signers, who in turn were superior to the hearing nonsigners, who were the worst. Three hypotheses were made: That there would be no significant difference in terms of the number of attempts between the three groups on the verbalizable object task, that the hearing and deaf signers would demonstrate superior performance to that of the hearing nonsigners on the matching faces task, and that the hearing and deaf signers would exhibit similar performance levels on the matching faces task. The first two hypotheses were supported, but the third was not. Deaf signers were found to be superior for memory for faces to hearing signers and hearing nonsigners. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed, including the possibility that deafness and the long use of sign language have additive effects.

Directed forgetting: differential effects on typical and distinctive faces.

PubMed

Metzger, Mitchell M

2011-01-01

Directed forgetting (DF) occurs when stimuli presented during the study phase are followed by "forget" and "remember" cues. On a subsequent memory test, poor memory is observed for stimuli followed by the forget cues, compared to stimuli followed by the remember cues. Although DF is most commonly observed with verbal tasks, the present study extended intentional forgetting research for nonverbal stimuli and examined whether faces were susceptible to DF. Results confirmed that the presentation of a forget cue significantly reduced recognition for faces, as compared to faces followed by a remember cue. Additionally, a well-established finding in face recognition is that distinctive faces are better remembered than typical faces, and Experiment 2 assessed whether face appearance influenced the degree of DF. Results indicate that the DF effect observed in Experiment 1 was replicated in Experiment 2 and that the effect was more pronounced for those faces that were typical in appearance.

Face distinctiveness and delayed testing: differential effects on performance and confidence.

PubMed

Metzger, Mitchell M

2006-04-01

The author investigated the effect of delayed testing on participants' memory for distinctive and typical faces. Participants viewed distinctive and typical faces and were then tested for recognition immediately or after a delay of 3, 6, or 12 weeks. Consistent with prior research, analysis of measure of sensitivity (d') showed that participants performed better on distinctive rather than typical faces, and memory performance declined with longer retention intervals between study and testing. Furthermore, the superior performance on distinctive faces had vanished by the 12-week test. Contrary to d' data, however, an analysis of confidence scores indicated that participants were still significantly more confident on trials depicting distinctive faces, even with a 12-week delay between study and recognition testing.

A Visual Short-Term Memory Advantage for Objects of Expertise

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curby, Kim M.; Glazek, Kuba; Gauthier, Isabel

2009-01-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is limited, especially for complex objects. Its capacity, however, is greater for faces than for other objects; this advantage may stem from the holistic nature of face processing. If the holistic processing explains this advantage, object expertise--which also relies on holistic processing--should endow experts…

A Memory Advantage for Untrustworthy Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rule, Nicholas O.; Slepian, Michael L.; Ambady, Nalini

2012-01-01

Inferences of others' social traits from their faces can influence how we think and behave towards them, but little is known about how perceptions of people's traits may affect downstream cognitions, such as memory. Here we explored the relationship between targets' perceived social traits and how well they were remembered following a single brief…

Association between CSF biomarkers, hippocampal volume and cognitive function in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

PubMed

Nathan, Pradeep J; Lim, Yen Ying; Abbott, Rosemary; Galluzzi, Samantha; Marizzoni, Moira; Babiloni, Claudio; Albani, Diego; Bartres-Faz, David; Didic, Mira; Farotti, Lucia; Parnetti, Lucilla; Salvadori, Nicola; Müller, Bernhard W; Forloni, Gianluigi; Girtler, Nicola; Hensch, Tilman; Jovicich, Jorge; Leeuwis, Annebet; Marra, Camillo; Molinuevo, José Luis; Nobili, Flavio; Pariente, Jeremie; Payoux, Pierre; Ranjeva, Jean-Philippe; Rolandi, Elena; Rossini, Paolo Maria; Schönknecht, Peter; Soricelli, Andrea; Tsolaki, Magda; Visser, Pieter Jelle; Wiltfang, Jens; Richardson, Jill C; Bordet, Régis; Blin, Olivier; Frisoni, Giovanni B

2017-05-01

Few studies have examined the relationship between CSF and structural biomarkers, and cognitive function in MCI. We examined the relationship between cognitive function, hippocampal volume and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Aβ 42 and tau in 145 patients with MCI. Patients were assessed on cognitive tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Functional Activities Questionnaire. Hippocampal volume was measured using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and CSF markers of Aβ 42 , tau and p-tau 181 were also measured. Worse performance on a wide range of memory and sustained attention tasks were associated with reduced hippocampal volume, higher CSF tau and p-tau 181 and increased tau/Aβ 42 ratio. Memory tasks were also associated with lower ability to conduct functional activities of daily living, providing a link between AD biomarkers, memory performance and functional outcome. These results suggest that biomarkers of Aβ and tau are strongly related to cognitive performance as assessed by the CANTAB, and have implications for the early detection and characterization of incipient AD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Hemispheric processing asymmetries: implications for memory.

PubMed

Funnell, M G; Corballis, P M; Gazzaniga, M S

2001-01-01

Recent research has demonstrated that memory for words elicits left hemisphere activation, faces right hemisphere activation, and nameable objects bilateral activation. This pattern of results was attributed to dual coding of information, with the left hemisphere employing a verbal code and the right a nonverbal code. Nameable objects can be encoded either verbally or nonverbally and this accounts for their bilateral activation. We investigated this hypothesis in a callosotomy patient. Consistent with dual coding, the left hemisphere was superior to the right in memory for words, whereas the right was superior for faces. Contrary to prediction, performance on nameable pictures was not equivalent in the two hemispheres, but rather resulted in a right hemisphere superiority. In addition, memory for pictures was significantly better than for either words or faces. These findings suggest that the dual code hypothesis is an oversimplification of the processing capabilities of the two hemispheres.

Executive functions as endophenotypes in ADHD: evidence from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Battery (CANTAB).

PubMed

Gau, Susan Shur-Fen; Shang, Chi-Yung

2010-07-01

Little is known about executive functions among unaffected siblings of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and there is lack of such information from non-Western countries. We examined verbal and nonverbal executive functions in adolescents with ADHD, unaffected siblings and controls to test whether executive functions could be potential endophenotypes for ADHD. We assessed 279 adolescents (age range: 11-17 years) with a childhood diagnosis of DSM-IV ADHD, 136 biological siblings (108 unaffected, 79.4%), and 173 unaffected controls by using psychiatric interviews, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - 3rd edition (WISC-III), including digit spans, and the tasks involving executive functions of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB): Intra-dimensional/Extra-dimensional Shifts (IED), Spatial Span (SSP), Spatial Working Memory (SWM), and Stockings of Cambridge (SOC). Compared with the controls, adolescents with ADHD and unaffected siblings had a significantly shorter backward digit span, more extra-dimensional shift errors in the IED, shorter spatial span length in the SSP, more total errors and poorer strategy use in the SWM, and fewer problems solved in the minimum number of moves and shorter initial thinking time in the SOC. The magnitudes of the differences in the SWM and SOC increased with increased task difficulties. In general, neither persistent ADHD nor comorbidity was associated with increased deficits in executive functions among adolescents with ADHD. The lack of much difference in executive dysfunctions between unaffected siblings and ADHD adolescents suggests that executive dysfunctions may be useful cognitive endophenotypes for ADHD genetic studies.

Modulation of fusiform cortex activity by cholinesterase inhibition predicts effects on subsequent memory.

PubMed

Bentley, P; Driver, J; Dolan, R J

2009-09-01

Cholinergic influences on memory are likely to be expressed at several processing stages, including via well-recognized effects of acetylcholine on stimulus processing during encoding. Since previous studies have shown that cholinesterase inhibition enhances visual extrastriate cortex activity during stimulus encoding, especially under attention-demanding tasks, we tested whether this effect correlates with improved subsequent memory. In a within-subject physostigmine versus placebo design, we measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while healthy and mild Alzheimer's disease subjects performed superficial and deep encoding tasks on face (and building) visual stimuli. We explored regions in which physostigmine modulation of face-selective neural responses correlated with physostigmine effects on subsequent recognition performance. In healthy subjects physostigmine led to enhanced later recognition for deep- versus superficially-encoded faces, which correlated across subjects with a physostigmine-induced enhancement of face-selective responses in right fusiform cortex during deep- versus superficial-encoding tasks. In contrast, the Alzheimer's disease group showed neither a depth of processing effect nor restoration of this with physostigmine. Instead, patients showed a task-independent improvement in confident memory with physostigmine, an effect that correlated with enhancements in face-selective (but task-independent) responses in bilateral fusiform cortices. Our results indicate that one mechanism by which cholinesterase inhibitors can improve memory is by enhancing extrastriate cortex stimulus selectivity at encoding, in a manner that for healthy people but not in Alzheimer's disease is dependent upon depth of processing.

Why am I not photogenic? Differences in face memory for the self and others

PubMed Central

Wen, Wen; Kawabata, Hideaki

2014-01-01

Many people complain that they do not photograph well. In the present study, we hypothesised that the self-face is memorized more beautifully than reality, which may result in reports of being not photogenic. We took photographs of students who were in the same university course and were familiar with one another. We then magnified or shrunk the size of their eyes (Experiment 1; N = 10) and their mouths (Experiment 2; N = 10). We asked the students to select the picture that seemed most like their classmates' real faces or their own real face. The results showed that there were significant differences between memories of their own and others' faces. Participants selected their classmates' real faces to a greater degree than the modified faces. However, participants tended to select pictures of themselves with magnified eyes and shrunken mouths more often than for their classmates. In Experiment 3 (N = 22), more male participants were included and the influence of gender and mirror-reversed images were examined. We found that there were no significant differences across gender, and the mirror reversal did not change the participants' selections. The bias of self-face recognition may reflect different memory processes for the self and others. PMID:25469224

Face-name association task reveals memory networks in patients with left and right hippocampal sclerosis.

PubMed

Klamer, Silke; Milian, Monika; Erb, Michael; Rona, Sabine; Lerche, Holger; Ethofer, Thomas

2017-01-01

We aimed to identify reorganization processes of episodic memory networks in patients with left and right temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) due to hippocampal sclerosis as well as their relations to neuropsychological memory performance. We investigated 28 healthy subjects, 12 patients with left TLE (LTLE) and 9 patients with right TLE (RTLE) with hippocampal sclerosis by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using a face-name association task, which combines verbal and non-verbal memory functions. Regions-of-interest (ROIs) were defined based on the group results of the healthy subjects. In each ROI, fMRI activations were compared across groups and correlated with verbal and non-verbal memory scores. The face-name association task yielded activations in bilateral hippocampus (HC), left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral angular gyrus (AG), bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and right anterior temporal lobe (ATL). LTLE patients demonstrated significantly less activation in the left HC and left SFG, whereas RTLE patients showed significantly less activation in the HC bilaterally, the left SFG and right AG. Verbal memory scores correlated with activations in the left and right HC, left SFG and right ATL and non-verbal memory scores with fMRI activations in the left and right HC and left SFG. The face-name association task can be employed to examine functional alterations of hippocampal activation during encoding of both verbal and non-verbal material in one fMRI paradigm. Further, the left SFG seems to be a convergence region for encoding of verbal and non-verbal material.

Appearance-based first impressions and person memory.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Mieth, Laura; Buchner, Axel

2015-03-01

Previous research has demonstrated that people preferentially remember reputational information that is emotionally incongruent to their expectations, but it has left open the question of the generality of this effect. Three conflicting hypotheses were proposed: (a) The effect is restricted to information relevant to reciprocal social exchange. (b) The effect is most pronounced for emotional (approach-and-avoidance-relevant) information. (c) The effect is due to a general tendency of the cognitive system to attend to unexpected and novel information regardless of its (emotional) content. Here, we varied the type of to-be-remembered person information across experiments. To stimulate expectations, we selected faces whose facial appearance was rated as pleasant or disgusting (Experiments 1 and 2), as intelligent or unintelligent (Experiment 3), or as being that of a lawyer or a farmer (Experiment 4). These faces were paired with behavior descriptions that violated or confirmed these appearance-based 1st impressions. Source memory for the association between the faces and the descriptions was assessed with surprise memory tests. The results show that people are willing to form various social expectations based on facial appearance alone, and they support the hypothesis that the classification of the faces in the memory test is biased by schema-congruent guessing. Source memory was generally enhanced for information violating appearance-based social expectations. In sum, the results show that person memory is consistently affected by different kinds of social expectations, supporting the idea that the mechanisms determining memory performance generalize beyond exchange-relevant reputational and emotional information. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Electrophysiological evidence for parts and wholes in visual face memory.

PubMed

Towler, John; Eimer, Martin

2016-10-01

It is often assumed that upright faces are represented in a holistic fashion, while representations of inverted faces are essentially part-based. To assess this hypothesis, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a sequential face identity matching task where successively presented pairs of upright or inverted faces were either identical or differed with respect to their internal features, their external features, or both. Participants' task was to report on each trial whether the face pair was identical or different. To track the activation of visual face memory representations, we measured N250r components that emerge over posterior face-selective regions during the activation of visual face memory representations by a successful identity match. N250r components to full identity repetitions were smaller and emerged later for inverted as compared to upright faces, demonstrating that image inversion impairs face identity matching processes. For upright faces, N250r components were also elicited by partial repetitions of external or internal features, which suggest that the underlying identity matching processes are not exclusively based on non-decomposable holistic representations. However, the N250r to full identity repetitions was super-additive (i.e., larger than the sum of the two N250r components to partial repetitions of external or internal features) for upright faces, demonstrating that holistic representations were involved in identity matching processes. For inverted faces, N250r components to full and partial identity repetitions were strictly additive, indicating that the identity matching of external and internal features operated in an entirely part-based fashion. These results provide new electrophysiological evidence for qualitative differences between representations of upright and inverted faces in the occipital-temporal face processing system. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Report from the second cytomegalovirus and immunosenescence workshop

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

The Second International Workshop on CMV & Immunosenescence was held in Cambridge, UK, 2-4th December, 2010. The presentations covered four separate sessions: cytomegalovirus and T cell phenotypes; T cell memory frequency, inflation and immunosenescence; cytomegalovirus in aging, mortality and disease states; and the immunobiology of cytomegalovirus-specific T cells and effects of the virus on vaccination. This commentary summarizes the major findings of these presentations and references subsequently published work from the presenter laboratory where appropriate and draws together major themes that were subsequently discussed along with new areas of interest that were highlighted by this discussion. PMID:22035114

Dissociating neural markers of stimulus memorability and subjective recognition during episodic retrieval.

PubMed

Bainbridge, Wilma A; Rissman, Jesse

2018-06-06

While much of memory research takes an observer-centric focus looking at participant performance, recent work has pinpointed important item-centric effects on memory, or how intrinsically memorable a given stimulus is. However, little is known about the neural correlates of memorability during memory retrieval, or how such correlates relate to subjective memory behavior. Here, stimuli and blood-oxygen-level dependent data from a prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study were reanalyzed using a memorability-based framework. In that study, sixteen participants studied 200 novel face images and were scanned while making recognition memory judgments on those faces, interspersed with 200 unstudied faces. In the current investigation, memorability scores for those stimuli were obtained through an online crowd-sourced (N = 740) continuous recognition test that measured each image's corrected recognition rate. Representational similarity analyses were conducted across the brain to identify regions wherein neural pattern similarity tracked item-specific effects (stimulus memorability) versus observer-specific effects (individual memory performance). We find two non-overlapping sets of regions, with memorability-related information predominantly represented within ventral and medial temporal regions and memory retrieval outcome-related information within fronto-parietal regions. These memorability-based effects persist regardless of image history, implying that coding of stimulus memorability may be a continuous and automatic perceptual process.

Neural Mechanisms of Context Effects on Face Recognition: Automatic Binding and Context Shift Decrements

PubMed Central

Hayes, Scott M.; Baena, Elsa; Truong, Trong-Kha; Cabeza, Roberto

2011-01-01

Although people do not normally try to remember associations between faces and physical contexts, these associations are established automatically, as indicated by the difficulty of recognizing familiar faces in different contexts (“butcher-on-the-bus” phenomenon). The present functional MRI (fMRI) study investigated the automatic binding of faces and scenes. In the Face-Face (F-F) condition, faces were presented alone during both encoding and retrieval, whereas in the Face/Scene-Face (FS-F) condition, they were presented overlaid on scenes during encoding but alone during retrieval (context change). Although participants were instructed to focus only on the faces during both encoding and retrieval, recognition performance was worse in the FS-F than the F-F condition (“context shift decrement”—CSD), confirming automatic face-scene binding during encoding. This binding was mediated by the hippocampus as indicated by greater subsequent memory effects (remembered > forgotten) in this region for the FS-F than the F-F condition. Scene memory was mediated by the right parahippocampal cortex, which was reactivated during successful retrieval when the faces were associated with a scene during encoding (FS-F condition). Analyses using the CSD as a regressor yielded a clear hemispheric asymmetry in medial temporal lobe activity during encoding: left hippocampal and parahippocampal activity was associated with a smaller CSD, indicating more flexible memory representations immune to context changes, whereas right hippocampal/rhinal activity was associated with a larger CSD, indicating less flexible representations sensitive to context change. Taken together, the results clarify the neural mechanisms of context effects on face recognition. PMID:19925208

Factors affecting reorganisation of memory encoding networks in temporal lobe epilepsy

PubMed Central

Sidhu, M.K.; Stretton, J.; Winston, G.P.; Symms, M.; Thompson, P.J.; Koepp, M.J.; Duncan, J.S.

2015-01-01

Summary Aims In temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) due to hippocampal sclerosis reorganisation in the memory encoding network has been consistently described. Distinct areas of reorganisation have been shown to be efficient when associated with successful subsequent memory formation or inefficient when not associated with successful subsequent memory. We investigated the effect of clinical parameters that modulate memory functions: age at onset of epilepsy, epilepsy duration and seizure frequency in a large cohort of patients. Methods We studied 53 patients with unilateral TLE and hippocampal sclerosis (29 left). All participants performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging memory encoding paradigm of faces and words. A continuous regression analysis was used to investigate the effects of age at onset of epilepsy, epilepsy duration and seizure frequency on the activation patterns in the memory encoding network. Results Earlier age at onset of epilepsy was associated with left posterior hippocampus activations that were involved in successful subsequent memory formation in left hippocampal sclerosis patients. No association of age at onset of epilepsy was seen with face encoding in right hippocampal sclerosis patients. In both left hippocampal sclerosis patients during word encoding and right hippocampal sclerosis patients during face encoding, shorter duration of epilepsy and lower seizure frequency were associated with medial temporal lobe activations that were involved in successful memory formation. Longer epilepsy duration and higher seizure frequency were associated with contralateral extra-temporal activations that were not associated with successful memory formation. Conclusion Age at onset of epilepsy influenced verbal memory encoding in patients with TLE due to hippocampal sclerosis in the speech-dominant hemisphere. Shorter duration of epilepsy and lower seizure frequency were associated with less disruption of the efficient memory encoding network whilst longer duration and higher seizure frequency were associated with greater, inefficient, extra-temporal reorganisation. PMID:25616449

The role of relational binding in item memory: evidence from face recognition in a case of developmental amnesia.

PubMed

Olsen, Rosanna K; Lee, Yunjo; Kube, Jana; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Grady, Cheryl L; Moscovitch, Morris; Ryan, Jennifer D

2015-04-01

Current theories state that the hippocampus is responsible for the formation of memory representations regarding relations, whereas extrahippocampal cortical regions support representations for single items. However, findings of impaired item memory in hippocampal amnesics suggest a more nuanced role for the hippocampus in item memory. The hippocampus may be necessary when the item elements need to be bound within and across episodes to form a lasting representation that can be used flexibly. The current investigation was designed to test this hypothesis in face recognition. H.C., an individual who developed with a compromised hippocampal system, and control participants incidentally studied individual faces that either varied in presentation viewpoint across study repetitions or remained in a fixed viewpoint across the study repetitions. Eye movements were recorded during encoding and participants then completed a surprise recognition memory test. H.C. demonstrated altered face viewing during encoding. Although the overall number of fixations made by H.C. was not significantly different from that of controls, the distribution of her viewing was primarily directed to the eye region. Critically, H.C. was significantly impaired in her ability to subsequently recognize faces studied from variable viewpoints, but demonstrated spared performance in recognizing faces she encoded from a fixed viewpoint, implicating a relationship between eye movement behavior in the service of a hippocampal binding function. These findings suggest that a compromised hippocampal system disrupts the ability to bind item features within and across study repetitions, ultimately disrupting recognition when it requires access to flexible relational representations. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/355342-09$15.00/0.

Technology Solutions Case Study: Boiler Control Replacement for Hydronically Heated Multifamily Buildings, Cambridge, Massachusetts

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

2014-11-01

The ARIES Collaborative, a U.S. Department of Energy Building America research team, partnered with NeighborWorks America affiliate Homeowners' Rehab Inc. (HRI) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study improvements to the central hydronic heating system in one of the nonprofit's housing developments. The heating controls in the three-building, 42-unit Columbia Cambridge Alliance for Spanish Tenants housing development were upgraded. Fuel use in the development was excessive compared to similar properties. A poorly insulated thermal envelope contributed to high energy bills, but adding wall insulation was not cost-effective or practical. The more cost-effective option was improving heating system efficiency, which faced several obstacles,more » including inflexible boiler controls and failed thermostatic radiator valves. Boiler controls were replaced with systems that offer temperature setbacks and one that controls heat based on apartment temperature in addition to outdoor temperature. Utility bill analysis shows that post-retrofit weather-normalized heating energy use was reduced by 10%-31% (average of 19%). Indoor temperature cutoff reduced boiler runtime (and therefore heating fuel consumption) by 28% in the one building in which it was implemented. Nearly all savings were obtained during night which had a lower indoor temperature cut off (68°F) than day (73° F). This implies that the outdoor reset curve was appropriately adjusted for this building for daytime operation. Nighttime setback of heating system supply water temperature had no discernable impact on boiler runtime or gas bills.« less

Sex differences in face processing are mediated by handedness and sexual orientation.

PubMed

Brewster, Paul W H; Mullin, Caitlin R; Dobrin, Roxana A; Steeves, Jennifer K E

2011-03-01

Previous research has demonstrated sex differences in face processing at both neural and behavioural levels. The present study examined the role of handedness and sexual orientation as mediators of this effect. We compared the performance of LH (left-handed) and RH (right-handed) heterosexual and homosexual male and female participants on a face recognition memory task. Our main findings were that homosexual males have better face recognition memory than both heterosexual males and homosexual women. We also demonstrate better face processing in women than in men. Finally, LH heterosexual participants had better face recognition than LH homosexual participants and also tended to be better than RH heterosexual participants. These findings are consistent with differences in the organisation and laterality of face-processing mechanisms as a function of sex, handedness, and sexual orientation.

Inter-Individual Variation in Fronto-Temporal Connectivity Predicts the Ability to Learn Different Types of Associations

PubMed Central

Alm, Kylie H.; Rolheiser, Tyler; Olson, Ingrid R.

2016-01-01

The uncinate fasciculus connects portions of the anterior and medial temporal lobes to the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, so it has long been thought that this limbic fiber pathway plays an important role in episodic memory. Some types of episodic memory are impaired after damage to the uncinate, while others remain intact. Because of this, the specific role played by the uncinate fasciculus in episodic memory remains undetermined. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that the uncinate fasciculus is involved in episodic memory tasks that have high competition between representations at retrieval. To test this hypothesis, healthy young adults performed three tasks: Experiment 1 in which they learned to associate names with faces through feedback provided at the end of each trial; Experiment 2 in which they learned to associate fractals with cued locations through feedback provided at the end of each trial; and Experiment 3 in which unique faces were remembered in a paradigm with low retrieval competition. Diffusion tensor imaging and deterministic tractography methods were used to extract measures of uncinate fasciculus microstructure. Results revealed that microstructural properties of the uncinate, but not a control tract, the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, significantly predicted individual differences in performance on the face-name and fractal-location tasks. However, no relationship was observed for simple face memory (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that the uncinate fasciculus may be important for adjudicating between competing memory representations at the time of episodic retrieval. PMID:26908315

Sleep benefits in parallel implicit and explicit measures of episodic memory.

PubMed

Weber, Frederik D; Wang, Jing-Yi; Born, Jan; Inostroza, Marion

2014-03-14

Research in rats using preferences during exploration as a measure of memory has indicated that sleep is important for the consolidation of episodic-like memory, i.e., memory for an event bound into specific spatio-temporal context. How these findings relate to human episodic memory is unclear. We used spontaneous preferences during visual exploration and verbal recall as, respectively, implicit and explicit measures of memory, to study effects of sleep on episodic memory consolidation in humans. During encoding before 10-h retention intervals that covered nighttime sleep or daytime wakefulness, two groups of young adults were presented with two episodes that were 1-h apart. Each episode entailed a spatial configuration of four different faces in a 3 × 3 grid of locations. After the retention interval, implicit spatio-temporal recall performance was assessed by eye-tracking visual exploration of another configuration of four faces of which two were from the first and second episode, respectively; of the two faces one was presented at the same location as during encoding and the other at another location. Afterward explicit verbal recall was assessed. Measures of implicit and explicit episodic memory retention were positively correlated (r = 0.57, P < 0.01), and were both better after nighttime sleep than daytime wakefulness (P < 0.05). In the sleep group, implicit episodic memory recall was associated with increased fast spindles during nonrapid eye movement (NonREM) sleep (r = 0.62, P < 0.05). Together with concordant observations in rats our results indicate that consolidation of genuinely episodic memory benefits from sleep.

Sleep benefits in parallel implicit and explicit measures of episodic memory

PubMed Central

Weber, Frederik D.; Wang, Jing-Yi; Born, Jan; Inostroza, Marion

2014-01-01

Research in rats using preferences during exploration as a measure of memory has indicated that sleep is important for the consolidation of episodic-like memory, i.e., memory for an event bound into specific spatio-temporal context. How these findings relate to human episodic memory is unclear. We used spontaneous preferences during visual exploration and verbal recall as, respectively, implicit and explicit measures of memory, to study effects of sleep on episodic memory consolidation in humans. During encoding before 10-h retention intervals that covered nighttime sleep or daytime wakefulness, two groups of young adults were presented with two episodes that were 1-h apart. Each episode entailed a spatial configuration of four different faces in a 3 × 3 grid of locations. After the retention interval, implicit spatio-temporal recall performance was assessed by eye-tracking visual exploration of another configuration of four faces of which two were from the first and second episode, respectively; of the two faces one was presented at the same location as during encoding and the other at another location. Afterward explicit verbal recall was assessed. Measures of implicit and explicit episodic memory retention were positively correlated (r = 0.57, P < 0.01), and were both better after nighttime sleep than daytime wakefulness (P < 0.05). In the sleep group, implicit episodic memory recall was associated with increased fast spindles during nonrapid eye movement (NonREM) sleep (r = 0.62, P < 0.05). Together with concordant observations in rats our results indicate that consolidation of genuinely episodic memory benefits from sleep. PMID:24634354

Oxytocin eliminates the own-race bias in face recognition memory☆

PubMed Central

Blandón-Gitlin, Iris; Pezdek, Kathy; Saldivar, Sesar; Steelman, Erin

2015-01-01

The neuropeptide Oxytocin influences a number of social behaviors, including processing of faces. We examined whether Oxytocin facilitates the processing of out-group faces and reduce the own-race bias (ORB). The ORB is a robust phenomenon characterized by poor recognition memory of other-race faces compared to the same-race faces. In Experiment 1, participants received intranasal solutions of Oxytocin or placebo prior to viewing White and Black faces. On a subsequent recognition test, whereas in the placebo condition the same-race faces were better recognized than other-race faces, in the Oxytocin condition Black and White faces were equally well recognized, effectively eliminating the ORB. In Experiment 2, Oxytocin was administered after the study phase. The ORB resulted, but Oxytocin did not significantly reduce the effect. This study is the first to show that Oxytocin can enhance face memory of out-group members and underscore the importance of social encoding mechanisms underlying the own-race bias. PMID:23872107

Visual memory and sustained attention impairment in youths with autism spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Chien, Y-L; Gau, S S-F; Shang, C-Y; Chiu, Y-N; Tsai, W-C; Wu, Y-Y

2015-08-01

An uneven neurocognitive profile is a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Studies focusing on the visual memory performance in ASD have shown controversial results. We investigated visual memory and sustained attention in youths with ASD and typically developing (TD) youths. We recruited 143 pairs of youths with ASD (males 93.7%; mean age 13.1, s.d. 3.5 years) and age- and sex-matched TD youths. The ASD group consisted of 67 youths with autistic disorder (autism) and 76 with Asperger's disorder (AS) based on the DSM-IV criteria. They were assessed using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery involving the visual memory [spatial recognition memory (SRM), delayed matching to sample (DMS), paired associates learning (PAL)] and sustained attention (rapid visual information processing; RVP). Youths with ASD performed significantly worse than TD youths on most of the tasks; the significance disappeared in the superior intelligence quotient (IQ) subgroup. The response latency on the tasks did not differ between the ASD and TD groups. Age had significant main effects on SRM, DMS, RVP and part of PAL tasks and had an interaction with diagnosis in DMS and RVP performance. There was no significant difference between autism and AS on visual tasks. Our findings implied that youths with ASD had a wide range of visual memory and sustained attention impairment that was moderated by age and IQ, which supports temporal and frontal lobe dysfunction in ASD. The lack of difference between autism and AS implies that visual memory and sustained attention cannot distinguish these two ASD subtypes, which supports DSM-5 ASD criteria.

Recognition memory in developmental prosopagnosia: electrophysiological evidence for abnormal routes to face recognition

PubMed Central

Burns, Edwin J.; Tree, Jeremy J.; Weidemann, Christoph T.

2014-01-01

Dual process models of recognition memory propose two distinct routes for recognizing a face: recollection and familiarity. Recollection is characterized by the remembering of some contextual detail from a previous encounter with a face whereas familiarity is the feeling of finding a face familiar without any contextual details. The Remember/Know (R/K) paradigm is thought to index the relative contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. Despite researchers measuring face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) through a variety of methods, none have considered the distinct contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. The present study examined recognition memory for faces in eight individuals with DP and a group of controls using an R/K paradigm while recording electroencephalogram (EEG) data at the scalp. Those with DP were found to produce fewer correct “remember” responses and more false alarms than controls. EEG results showed that posterior “remember” old/new effects were delayed and restricted to the right posterior (RP) area in those with DP in comparison to the controls. A posterior “know” old/new effect commonly associated with familiarity for faces was only present in the controls whereas individuals with DP exhibited a frontal “know” old/new effect commonly associated with words, objects and pictures. These results suggest that individuals with DP do not utilize normal face-specific routes when making face recognition judgments but instead process faces using a pathway more commonly associated with objects. PMID:25177283

Evidence for Working Memory Storage Operations in Perceptual Cortex

PubMed Central

Sreenivasan, Kartik K.; Gratton, Caterina; Vytlacil, Jason; D’Esposito, Mark

2014-01-01

Isolating the short-term storage component of working memory (WM) from the myriad of associated executive processes has been an enduring challenge. Recent efforts have identified patterns of activity in visual regions that contain information about items being held in WM. However, it remains unclear (i) whether these representations withstand intervening sensory input and (ii) how communication between multimodal association cortex and unimodal perceptual regions supporting WM representations is involved in WM storage. We present evidence that the features of a face held in WM are stored within face processing regions, that these representations persist across subsequent sensory input, and that information about the match between sensory input and memory representation is relayed forward from perceptual to prefrontal regions. Participants were presented with a series of probe faces and indicated whether each probe matched a Target face held in WM. We parametrically varied the feature similarity between probe and Target faces. Activity within face processing regions scaled linearly with the degree of feature similarity between the probe face and the features of the Target face, suggesting that the features of the Target face were stored in these regions. Furthermore, directed connectivity measures revealed that the direction of information flow that was optimal for performance was from sensory regions that stored the features of the Target face to dorsal prefrontal regions, supporting the notion that sensory input is compared to representations stored within perceptual regions and relayed forward. Together, these findings indicate that WM storage operations are carried out within perceptual cortex. PMID:24436009

Semantic congruence enhances memory of episodic associations: role of theta oscillations.

PubMed

Atienza, Mercedes; Crespo-Garcia, Maite; Cantero, Jose L

2011-01-01

Growing evidence suggests that theta oscillations play a crucial role in episodic encoding. The present study evaluates whether changes in electroencephalographic theta source dynamics mediate the positive influence of semantic congruence on incidental associative learning. Here we show that memory for episodic associations (face-location) is more accurate when studied under semantically congruent contexts. However, only participants showing RT priming effect in a conceptual priming test (priming group) also gave faster responses when recollecting source information of semantically congruent faces as compared with semantically incongruent faces. This improved episodic retrieval was positively correlated with increases in theta power during the study phase mainly in the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, and left lateral posterior parietal lobe. Reconstructed signals from the estimated sources showed higher theta power for congruent than incongruent faces and also for the priming than the nonpriming group. These results are in agreement with the attention to memory model. Besides directing top-down attention to goal-relevant semantic information during encoding, the dorsal parietal lobe may also be involved in redirecting attention to bottom-up-driven memories thanks to connections between the medial-temporal and the left ventral parietal lobe. The latter function can either facilitate or interfere with encoding of face-location associations depending on whether they are preceded by semantically congruent or incongruent contexts, respectively, because only in the former condition retrieved representations related to the cue and the face are both coherent with the person identity and are both associated with the same location.

Implementation of an RBF neural network on embedded systems: real-time face tracking and identity verification.

PubMed

Yang, Fan; Paindavoine, M

2003-01-01

This paper describes a real time vision system that allows us to localize faces in video sequences and verify their identity. These processes are image processing techniques based on the radial basis function (RBF) neural network approach. The robustness of this system has been evaluated quantitatively on eight video sequences. We have adapted our model for an application of face recognition using the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL), Cambridge, UK, database so as to compare the performance against other systems. We also describe three hardware implementations of our model on embedded systems based on the field programmable gate array (FPGA), zero instruction set computer (ZISC) chips, and digital signal processor (DSP) TMS320C62, respectively. We analyze the algorithm complexity and present results of hardware implementations in terms of the resources used and processing speed. The success rates of face tracking and identity verification are 92% (FPGA), 85% (ZISC), and 98.2% (DSP), respectively. For the three embedded systems, the processing speeds for images size of 288 /spl times/ 352 are 14 images/s, 25 images/s, and 4.8 images/s, respectively.

Insular and hippocampal contributions to remembering people with an impression of bad personality.

PubMed

Tsukiura, Takashi; Shigemune, Yayoi; Nouchi, Rui; Kambara, Toshimune; Kawashima, Ryuta

2013-06-01

Our impressions of other people are formed mainly from the two possible factors of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness. Previous studies have shown the importance of orbitofrontal-hippocampal interactions in the better remembering of attractive faces, and psychological data have indicated that faces giving an impression of untrustworthiness are remembered more accurately than those giving an impression of trustworthiness. However, the neural mechanisms of the latter effect are largely unknown. To investigate this issue, we investigated neural activities with event-related fMRI while the female participants rated their impressions of the personalities of men in terms of trustworthiness. After the rating, memory for faces was tested to identify successful encoding activity. As expected, faces that gave bad impressions were remembered better than those that gave neutral or good impressions. In fMRI data, right insular activity reflected an increasing function of bad impressions, and bilateral hippocampal activities predicted subsequent memory success. Additionally, correlation between these insular and hippocampal regions was significant only in the encoding of faces associated with a bad impression. Better memory for faces associated with an impression of bad personality could reflect greater interaction between the avoidance-related insular region and the encoding-related hippocampal region.

Insular and hippocampal contributions to remembering people with an impression of bad personality

PubMed Central

Shigemune, Yayoi; Nouchi, Rui; Kambara, Toshimune; Kawashima, Ryuta

2013-01-01

Our impressions of other people are formed mainly from the two possible factors of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness. Previous studies have shown the importance of orbitofrontal–hippocampal interactions in the better remembering of attractive faces, and psychological data have indicated that faces giving an impression of untrustworthiness are remembered more accurately than those giving an impression of trustworthiness. However, the neural mechanisms of the latter effect are largely unknown. To investigate this issue, we investigated neural activities with event-related fMRI while the female participants rated their impressions of the personalities of men in terms of trustworthiness. After the rating, memory for faces was tested to identify successful encoding activity. As expected, faces that gave bad impressions were remembered better than those that gave neutral or good impressions. In fMRI data, right insular activity reflected an increasing function of bad impressions, and bilateral hippocampal activities predicted subsequent memory success. Additionally, correlation between these insular and hippocampal regions was significant only in the encoding of faces associated with a bad impression. Better memory for faces associated with an impression of bad personality could reflect greater interaction between the avoidance-related insular region and the encoding-related hippocampal region. PMID:22349799

The Effect of Chronic Alprazolam Intake on Memory, Attention, and Psychomotor Performance in Healthy Human Male Volunteers.

PubMed

Chowdhury, Zahid Sadek; Morshed, Mohammed Monzur; Shahriar, Mohammad; Bhuiyan, Mohiuddin Ahmed; Islam, Sardar Mohd Ashraful; Bin Sayeed, Muhammad Shahdaat

2016-01-01

Alprazolam is used as an anxiolytic drug for generalized anxiety disorder and it has been reported to produce sedation and anterograde amnesia. In the current study, we randomly divided 26 healthy male volunteers into two groups: one group taking alprazolam 0.5 mg and the other taking placebo daily for two weeks. We utilized the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) software to assess the chronic effect of alprazolam. We selected Paired Associates Learning (PAL) and Delayed Matching to Sample (DMS) tests for memory, Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP) for attention, and Choice Reaction Time (CRT) for psychomotor performance twice: before starting the treatment and after the completion of the treatment. We found statistically significant impairment of visual memory in one parameter of PAL and three parameters of DMS in alprazolam group. The PAL mean trial to success and total correct matching in 0-second delay, 4-second delay, and all delay situation of DMS were impaired in alprazolam group. RVP total hits after two weeks of alprazolam treatment were improved in alprazolam group. But such differences were not observed in placebo group. In our study, we found that chronic administration of alprazolam affects memory but attentive and psychomotor performance remained unaffected.

The Effect of Chronic Alprazolam Intake on Memory, Attention, and Psychomotor Performance in Healthy Human Male Volunteers

PubMed Central

Chowdhury, Zahid Sadek; Morshed, Mohammed Monzur; Shahriar, Mohammad; Bhuiyan, Mohiuddin Ahmed; Islam, Sardar Mohd. Ashraful

2016-01-01

Alprazolam is used as an anxiolytic drug for generalized anxiety disorder and it has been reported to produce sedation and anterograde amnesia. In the current study, we randomly divided 26 healthy male volunteers into two groups: one group taking alprazolam 0.5 mg and the other taking placebo daily for two weeks. We utilized the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) software to assess the chronic effect of alprazolam. We selected Paired Associates Learning (PAL) and Delayed Matching to Sample (DMS) tests for memory, Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP) for attention, and Choice Reaction Time (CRT) for psychomotor performance twice: before starting the treatment and after the completion of the treatment. We found statistically significant impairment of visual memory in one parameter of PAL and three parameters of DMS in alprazolam group. The PAL mean trial to success and total correct matching in 0-second delay, 4-second delay, and all delay situation of DMS were impaired in alprazolam group. RVP total hits after two weeks of alprazolam treatment were improved in alprazolam group. But such differences were not observed in placebo group. In our study, we found that chronic administration of alprazolam affects memory but attentive and psychomotor performance remained unaffected. PMID:27462136

Prospective memory impairment and its implications for community living skills in bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Au, Raymond W C; Ungvari, Gabor S; Lee, Edwin; Man, David; Shum, David H K; Xiang, Yu-Tao; Tang, Wai-Kwong

2013-12-01

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to undertake intended actions in the future. The functional significance of PM in bipolar disorder (BD) has not yet been investigated. This study examined PM impairment and its role in community living skills in clinically stable individuals with BD. Seventy-six individuals with BD and 44 healthy individuals were assessed with the Chinese version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test. Socio-demographic characteristics, retrospective memory (RM; the ability to recall or recognize past information), and intelligence were also measured in all participants. The clinical condition and community living skills of patients with BD were rated independently with standardized instruments. Patients with BD showed PM impairment and their PM total scores independently predicted the level of community living skills in regression analyses. In follow-up analyses, the contribution was found to be accounted for by the time-based PM scores. Given the expanding body of research on the utility of PM in predicting functioning, these findings further support the role of PM in community living skills in individuals with BD. The results suggest that PM training might be an integral part of clinical rehabilitation devised for individuals with BD. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Examining age-related shared variance between face cognition, vision, and self-reported physical health: a test of the common cause hypothesis for social cognition

PubMed Central

Olderbak, Sally; Hildebrandt, Andrea; Wilhelm, Oliver

2015-01-01

The shared decline in cognitive abilities, sensory functions (e.g., vision and hearing), and physical health with increasing age is well documented with some research attributing this shared age-related decline to a single common cause (e.g., aging brain). We evaluate the extent to which the common cause hypothesis predicts associations between vision and physical health with social cognition abilities specifically face perception and face memory. Based on a sample of 443 adults (17–88 years old), we test a series of structural equation models, including Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) models, and estimate the extent to which vision and self-reported physical health are related to face perception and face memory through a common factor, before and after controlling for their fluid cognitive component and the linear effects of age. Results suggest significant shared variance amongst these constructs, with a common factor explaining some, but not all, of the shared age-related variance. Also, we found that the relations of face perception, but not face memory, with vision and physical health could be completely explained by fluid cognition. Overall, results suggest that a single common cause explains most, but not all age-related shared variance with domain specific aging mechanisms evident. PMID:26321998

Looking like a criminal: stereotypical black facial features promote face source memory error.

PubMed

Kleider, Heather M; Cavrak, Sarah E; Knuycky, Leslie R

2012-11-01

The present studies tested whether African American face type (stereotypical or nonstereotypical) facilitated stereotype-consistent categorization, and whether that categorization influenced memory accuracy and errors. Previous studies have shown that stereotypically Black features are associated with crime and violence (e.g., Blair, Judd, & Chapleau Psychological Science 15:674-679, 2004; Blair, Judd, & Fallman Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87:763-778, 2004; Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83:5-252002); here, we extended this finding to investigate whether there is a bias toward remembering and recategorizing stereotypical faces as criminals. Using category labels, consistent (or inconsistent) with race-based expectations, we tested whether face recognition and recategorization were driven by the similarity between a target's facial features and a stereotyped category (i.e., stereotypical Black faces associated with crime/violence). The results revealed that stereotypical faces were associated more often with a stereotype-consistent label (Study 1), were remembered and correctly recategorized as criminals (Studies 2-4), and were miscategorized as criminals when memory failed. These effects occurred regardless of race or gender. Together, these findings suggest that face types have strong category associations that can promote stereotype-motivated recognition errors. Implications for eyewitness accuracy are discussed.

Predictors of agreement between general practitioner detection of dementia and the revised Cambridge Cognitive Assessment (CAMCOG-R).

PubMed

Pond, C Dimity; Mate, Karen E; Phillips, Jill; Stocks, Nigel P; Magin, Parker J; Weaver, Natasha; Brodaty, Henry

2013-10-01

Dementia is a complex and variable condition which makes recognition of it particularly difficult in a low prevalence primary care setting. This study examined the factors associated with agreement between an objective measure of cognitive function (the revised Cambridge Cognitive Assessment, CAMCOG-R) and general practitioner (GP) clinical judgment of dementia. This was a cross-sectional study involving 165 GPs and 2,024 community-dwelling patients aged 75 years or older. GPs provided their clinical judgment in relation to each of their patient's dementia status. Each patient's cognitive function and depression status was measured by a research nurse using the CAMCOG-R and the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), respectively. GPs correctly identified 44.5% of patients with CAMCOG-R dementia and 90% of patients without CAMCOG-R dementia. In those patients with CAMCOG-R dementia, two patient-dependent factors were most important for predicting agreement between the CAMCOG-R and GP judgment: the CAMCOG-R score (p = 0.006) and patient's mention of subjective memory complaints (SMC) to the GP (p = 0.040). A higher CAMCOG-R (p < 0.001) score, female gender (p = 0.005), and larger practice size (p < 0.001) were positively associated with GP agreement that the patient did not have dementia. Subjective memory complaints (p < 0.001) were more likely to result in a false-positive diagnosis of dementia. Timely recognition of dementia is advocated for optimal dementia management, but early recognition of a possible dementia syndrome needs to be balanced with awareness of the likelihood of false positives in detection. Although GPs correctly agree with dimensions measured by the CAMCOG-R, improvements in sensitivity are required for earlier detection of dementia.

Production does not improve memory for face-name associations.

PubMed

Hourihan, Kathleen L; Smith, Alexis R S

2016-06-01

Strategies for learning face-name associations are generally difficult and time-consuming. However, research has shown that saying a word aloud improves our memory for that word relative to words from the same set that were read silently. Such production effects have been shown for words, pictures, text material, and even word pairs. Can production improve memory for face-name associations? In Experiment 1, participants studied face-name pairs by reading half of the names aloud and half of the names silently, and were tested with cued recall. In Experiment 2, names were repeated aloud (or silently) for the full trial duration. Neither experiment showed a production effect in cued recall. Bayesian analyses showed positive support for the null effect. One possibility is that participants spontaneously implemented more elaborate encoding strategies that overrode any influence of production. However, a more likely explanation for the null production effect is that only half of each stimulus pair was produced-the name, but not the face. Consistent with this explanation, in Experiment 3 a production effect was not observed in cued recall of word-word pairs in which only the target words were read aloud or silently. Averaged across all 3 experiments, aloud targets were more likely to be recalled than silent targets (though not associated with the correct cue). The production effect in associative memory appears to require both members of a pair to be produced. Surprisingly, production shows little promise as a strategy for improving memory for the names of people we have just met. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

ADRA2B genotype differentially modulates stress-induced neural activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during emotional memory retrieval.

PubMed

Li, Shijia; Weerda, Riklef; Milde, Christopher; Wolf, Oliver T; Thiel, Christiane M

2015-02-01

Noradrenaline interacts with stress hormones in the amygdala and hippocampus to enhance emotional memory consolidation, but the noradrenergic-glucocorticoid interaction at retrieval, where stress impairs memory, is less understood. We used a genetic neuroimaging approach to investigate whether a genetic variation of the noradrenergic system impacts stress-induced neural activity in amygdala and hippocampus during recognition of emotional memory. This study is based on genotype-dependent reanalysis of data from our previous publication (Li et al. Brain Imaging Behav 2014). Twenty-two healthy male volunteers were genotyped for the ADRA2B gene encoding the α2B-adrenergic receptor. Ten deletion carriers and 12 noncarriers performed an emotional face recognition task, while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. During encoding, 50 fearful and 50 neutral faces were presented. One hour later, they underwent either an acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control procedure which was followed immediately by the retrieval session, where participants had to discriminate between 100 old and 50 new faces. A genotype-dependent modulation of neural activity at retrieval was found in the bilateral amygdala and right hippocampus. Deletion carriers showed decreased neural activity in the amygdala when recognizing emotional faces in control condition and increased amygdala activity under stress. Noncarriers showed no differences in emotional modulated amygdala activation under stress or control. Instead, stress-induced increases during recognition of emotional faces were present in the right hippocampus. The genotype-dependent effects of acute stress on neural activity in amygdala and hippocampus provide evidence for noradrenergic-glucocorticoid interaction in emotional memory retrieval.

Association between early attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms and current verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory.

PubMed

Gau, Susan Shur-Fen; Chiang, Huey-Ling

2013-01-01

Deficits in short-term memory are common in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their current ADHD symptoms cannot well predict their short-term performance. Taking a developmental perspective, we wanted to clarify the association between ADHD symptoms at early childhood and short-term memory in late childhood and adolescence. The participants included 401 patients with a clinical diagnosis of DSM-IV ADHD, 213 siblings, and 176 unaffected controls aged 8-17 years (mean age, 12.02 ± 2.24). All participants and their mothers were interviewed using the Chinese Kiddie Epidemiologic version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia to obtain information about ADHD symptoms and other psychiatric disorders retrospectively, at an earlier age first, then currently. The participants were assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--3rd edition, including Digit Span, and the Spatial working memory task of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Multi-level regression models were used for data analysis. Although crude analyses revealed that inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity symptoms significantly predicted deficits in short-term memory, only inattention symptoms had significant effects (all p<0.001) in a model that included all three ADHD symptoms. After further controlling for comorbidity, age of assessment, treatment with methylphenidate, and Full-scale IQ, the severity of childhood inattention symptoms was still significantly associated with worse verbal (p = 0.008) and spatial (p ranging from 0.017 to 0.002) short-term memory at the current assessment. Therefore, our findings suggest that earlier inattention symptoms are associated with impaired verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory at a later development stage. Impaired short-term memory in adolescence can be detected earlier by screening for the severity of inattention in childhood. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Heart rate response to post-learning stress predicts memory consolidation.

PubMed

Larra, Mauro F; Schulz, André; Schilling, Thomas M; Ferreira de Sá, Diana S; Best, Daniel; Kozik, Bartlomiej; Schächinger, Hartmut

2014-03-01

Stressful experiences are often well remembered, an effect that has been explained by beta-adrenergic influences on memory consolidation. Here, we studied the impact of stress induced heart rate (HR) responses on memory consolidation in a post-learning stress paradigm. 206 male and female participants saw 52 happy and angry faces immediately before being exposed to the Cold Pressor Test or a non-stressful control procedure. Memory for the faces and their respective expression was tested twice, after 30 min and on the next day. High HR responders (in comparison to low HR responders as well as to the non-stressful control group) showed enhanced recognition memory one day after learning. Our results show that beta-adrenergic activation elicited shortly after learning enhances memory consolidation and that the stress induced HR response is a predictor for this effect. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Nonlinear magnetoacoustic wave propagation with chemical reactions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Margulies, Timothy Scott

2002-11-01

The magnetoacoustic problem with an application to sound wave propagation through electrically conducting fluids such as the ocean in the Earth's magnetic field, liquid metals, or plasmas has been addressed taking into account several simultaneous chemical reactions. Using continuum balance equations for the total mass, linear momentum, energy; as well as Maxwell's electrodynamic equations, a nonlinear beam equation has been developed to generalize the Khokhlov-Zabolotskaya-Kuznetsov (KZK) equation for a fluid with linear viscosity but nonlinear and diffraction effects. Thermodynamic parameters are used and not tailored to only an adiabatic fluid case. The chemical kinetic equations build on a relaxing media approach presented, for example, by K. Naugolnukh and L. Ostrovsky [Nonlinear Wave Processes in Acoustics (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1998)] for a linearized single reaction and thermodynamic pressure equation of state. Approximations for large and small relaxation times and for magnetohydrodynamic parameters [Korsunskii, Sov. Phys. Acoust. 36 (1990)] are examined. Additionally, Cattaneo's equation for heat conduction and its generalization for a memory process rather than a Fourier's law are taken into account. It was introduced for the heat flux depends on the temperature gradient at an earlier time to generate heat pulses of finite speed.

The Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) data repository: Structural and functional MRI, MEG, and cognitive data from a cross-sectional adult lifespan sample.

PubMed

Taylor, Jason R; Williams, Nitin; Cusack, Rhodri; Auer, Tibor; Shafto, Meredith A; Dixon, Marie; Tyler, Lorraine K; Cam-Can; Henson, Richard N

2017-01-01

This paper describes the data repository for the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) initial study cohort. The Cam-CAN Stage 2 repository contains multi-modal (MRI, MEG, and cognitive-behavioural) data from a large (approximately N=700), cross-sectional adult lifespan (18-87years old) population-based sample. The study is designed to characterise age-related changes in cognition and brain structure and function, and to uncover the neurocognitive mechanisms that support healthy cognitive ageing. The database contains raw and preprocessed structural MRI, functional MRI (active tasks and resting state), and MEG data (active tasks and resting state), as well as derived scores from cognitive behavioural experiments spanning five broad domains (attention, emotion, action, language, and memory), and demographic and neuropsychological data. The dataset thus provides a depth of neurocognitive phenotyping that is currently unparalleled, enabling integrative analyses of age-related changes in brain structure, brain function, and cognition, and providing a testbed for novel analyses of multi-modal neuroimaging data. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Does perceived race affect discrimination and recognition of ambiguous-race faces? A test of the sociocognitive hypothesis.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Lie, Hanne C; Ewing, Louise; Evangelista, Emma; Tanaka, James W

2010-01-01

Discrimination and recognition are often poorer for other-race than own-race faces. These other-race effects (OREs) have traditionally been attributed to reduced perceptual expertise, resulting from more limited experience, with other-race faces. However, recent findings suggest that sociocognitive factors, such as reduced motivation to individuate other-race faces, may also contribute. If the sociocognitive hypothesis is correct, then it should be possible to alter discrimination and memory performance for identical faces by altering their perceived race. We made identical ambiguous-race morphed faces look either Asian or Caucasian by presenting them in Caucasian or Asian face contexts, respectively. However, this perceived-race manipulation had no effect on either discrimination (Experiment 1) or memory (Experiment 2) for the ambiguous-race faces, despite the presence of the usual OREs in discrimination and recognition of unambiguous Asian and Caucasian faces in our participant population. These results provide no support for the sociocognitive hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

The cross-race effect in face recognition memory by bicultural individuals.

PubMed

Marsh, Benjamin U; Pezdek, Kathy; Ozery, Daphna Hausman

2016-09-01

Social-cognitive models of the cross-race effect (CRE) generally specify that cross-race faces are automatically categorized as an out-group, and that different encoding processes are then applied to same-race and cross-race faces, resulting in better recognition memory for same-race faces. We examined whether cultural priming moderates the cognitive categorization of cross-race faces. In Experiment 1, monoracial Latino-Americans, considered to have a bicultural self, were primed to focus on either a Latino or American cultural self and then viewed Latino and White faces. Latino-Americans primed as Latino exhibited higher recognition accuracy (A') for Latino than White faces; those primed as American exhibited higher recognition accuracy for White than Latino faces. In Experiment 2, as predicted, prime condition did not moderate the CRE in European-Americans. These results suggest that for monoracial biculturals, priming either of their cultural identities influences the encoding processes applied to same- and cross-race faces, thereby moderating the CRE. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral studies.

PubMed

Weigelt, Sarah; Koldewyn, Kami; Kanwisher, Nancy

2012-03-01

Face recognition--the ability to recognize a person from their facial appearance--is essential for normal social interaction. Face recognition deficits have been implicated in the most common disorder of social interaction: autism. Here we ask: is face identity recognition in fact impaired in people with autism? Reviewing behavioral studies we find no strong evidence for a qualitative difference in how facial identity is processed between those with and without autism: markers of typical face identity recognition, such as the face inversion effect, seem to be present in people with autism. However, quantitatively--i.e., how well facial identity is remembered or discriminated--people with autism perform worse than typical individuals. This impairment is particularly clear in face memory and in face perception tasks in which a delay intervenes between sample and test, and less so in tasks with no memory demand. Although some evidence suggests that this deficit may be specific to faces, further evidence on this question is necessary. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On the Role of Individual Items in Recognition Memory and Metacognition: Challenges for Signal Detection Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Busey, Thomas A.; Arici, Anne

2009-01-01

The authors tested the role of individual items in recognition memory using a forced-choice paradigm with face stimuli. They constructed distractor stimuli using morphing procedures that were similar to two parent faces and then compared a studied morph against an unstudied morph that was similar to two studied parents. The similarity of the…

Enhanced Old-New Recognition and Source Memory for Faces of Cooperators and Defectors in a Social-Dilemma Game

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel; Musch, Jochen

2010-01-01

A popular assumption in evolutionary psychology is that the human mind comprises specialized cognitive modules for social exchange, including a module that serves to enhance memory for faces of cheaters. In the present study, participants played a trust game with computerized opponents, who either defected or cooperated. In a control condition, no…

Differential involvement of episodic and face representations in ERP repetition effects.

PubMed

Jemel, Boutheina; Calabria, Marco; Delvenne, Jean-François; Crommelinck, Marc; Bruyer, Raymond

2003-03-03

The purpose of this study was to disentangle the contribution of episodic-perceptual from pre-existing memory representations of faces to repetition effects. ERPs were recorded to first and second presentations of same and different photos of famous and unfamiliar faces, in an incidental task where occasional non-targets had to be detected. Repetition of same and different photos of famous faces resulted in an N400 amplitude decrement. No such N400 repetition-induced attenuation was observed for unfamiliar faces. In addition, repetition of same photos of faces, and not different ones, gave rise to an early ERP repetition effect (starting at approximately 350 ms) with an occipito-temporal scalp distribution. Together, these results suggest that repetition effects depend on two temporally and may be neuro-functionally distinct loci, episode-based representation and face recognition units stored in long-term memory.

The hows and whys of face memory: level of construal influences the recognition of human faces

PubMed Central

Wyer, Natalie A.; Hollins, Timothy J.; Pahl, Sabine; Roper, Jean

2015-01-01

Three experiments investigated the influence of level of construal (i.e., the interpretation of actions in terms of their meaning or their details) on different stages of face memory. We employed a standard multiple-face recognition paradigm, with half of the faces inverted at test. Construal level was manipulated prior to recognition (Experiment 1), during study (Experiment 2) or both (Experiment 3). The results support a general advantage for high-level construal over low-level construal at both study and at test, and suggest that matching processing style between study and recognition has no advantage. These experiments provide additional evidence in support of a link between semantic processing (i.e., construal) and visual (i.e., face) processing. We conclude with a discussion of implications for current theories relating to both construal and face processing. PMID:26500586

The influence of encoding strategy on episodic memory and cortical activity in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Bonner-Jackson, Aaron; Haut, Kristen; Csernansky, John G; Barch, Deanna M

2005-07-01

Recent work suggests that episodic memory deficits in schizophrenia may be related to disturbances of encoding or retrieval. Schizophrenia patients appear to benefit from instruction in episodic memory strategies. We tested the hypothesis that providing effective encoding strategies to schizophrenia patients enhances encoding-related brain activity and recognition performance. Seventeen schizophrenia patients and 26 healthy comparison subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while performing incidental encoding tasks of words and faces. Subjects were required to make either deep (abstract/concrete) or shallow (alphabetization) judgments for words and deep (gender) judgments for faces, followed by subsequent recognition tests. Schizophrenia and comparison subjects recognized significantly more words encoded deeply than shallowly, activated regions in inferior frontal cortex (Brodmann area 45/47) typically associated with deep and successful encoding of words, and showed greater left frontal activation for the processing of words compared with faces. However, during deep encoding and material-specific processing (words vs. faces), participants with schizophrenia activated regions not activated by control subjects, including several in prefrontal cortex. Our findings suggest that a deficit in use of effective strategies influences episodic memory performance in schizophrenia and that abnormalities in functional brain activation persist even when such strategies are applied.

Encoding and immediate retrieval tasks in patients with epilepsy: A functional MRI study of verbal and visual memory.

PubMed

Saddiki, Najat; Hennion, Sophie; Viard, Romain; Ramdane, Nassima; Lopes, Renaud; Baroncini, Marc; Szurhaj, William; Reyns, Nicolas; Pruvo, Jean Pierre; Delmaire, Christine

2018-05-01

Medial lobe temporal structures and more specifically the hippocampus play a decisive role in episodic memory. Most of the memory functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies evaluate the encoding phase; the retrieval phase being performed outside the MRI. We aimed to determine the ability to reveal greater hippocampal fMRI activations during retrieval phase. Thirty-five epileptic patients underwent a two-step memory fMRI. During encoding phase, subjects were requested to identify the feminine or masculine gender of faces and words presented, in order to encourage stimulus encoding. One hour after, during retrieval phase, subjects had to recognize the word and face. We used an event-related design to identify hippocampal activations. There was no significant difference between patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy, patients with right temporal lobe epilepsy and patients with extratemporal lobe epilepsy on verbal and visual learning task. For words, patients demonstrated significantly more bilateral hippocampal activation for retrieval task than encoding task and when the tasks were associated than during encoding alone. Significant difference was seen between face-encoding alone and face retrieval alone. This study demonstrates the essential contribution of the retrieval task during a fMRI memory task but the number of patients with hippocampal activations was greater when the two tasks were taken into account. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

Sad benefit in face working memory: an emotional bias of melancholic depression.

PubMed

Linden, Stefanie C; Jackson, Margaret C; Subramanian, Leena; Healy, David; Linden, David E J

2011-12-01

Emotion biases feature prominently in cognitive theories of depression and are a focus of psychological interventions. However, there is presently no stable neurocognitive marker of altered emotion-cognition interactions in depression. One reason may be the heterogeneity of major depressive disorder. Our aim in the present study was to find an emotional bias that differentiates patients with melancholic depression from controls, and patients with melancholic from those with non-melancholic depression. We used a working memory paradigm for emotional faces, where two faces with angry, happy, neutral, sad or fearful expression had to be retained over one second. Twenty patients with melancholic depression, 20 age-, education- and gender-matched control participants and 20 patients with non-melancholic depression participated in the study. We analysed performance on the working memory task using signal detection measures. We found an interaction between group and emotion on working memory performance that was driven by the higher performance for sad faces compared to other categories in the melancholic group. We computed a measure of "sad benefit", which distinguished melancholic and non-melancholic patients with good sensitivity and specificity. However, replication studies and formal discriminant analysis will be needed in order to assess whether emotion bias in working memory may become a useful diagnostic tool to distinguish these two syndromes. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Curvilinear relationship between phonological working memory load and social-emotional modulation

PubMed Central

Mano, Quintino R.; Brown, Gregory G.; Bolden, Khalima; Aupperle, Robin; Sullivan, Sarah; Paulus, Martin P.; Stein, Murray B.

2015-01-01

Accumulating evidence suggests that working memory load is an important factor for the interplay between cognitive and facial-affective processing. However, it is unclear how distraction caused by perception of faces interacts with load-related performance. We developed a modified version of the delayed match-to-sample task wherein task-irrelevant facial distracters were presented early in the rehearsal of pseudoword memoranda that varied incrementally in load size (1-syllable, 2-syllables, or 3-syllables). Facial distracters displayed happy, sad, or neutral expressions in Experiment 1 (N=60) and happy, fearful, or neutral expressions in Experiment 2 (N=29). Facial distracters significantly disrupted task performance in the intermediate load condition (2-syllable) but not in the low or high load conditions (1- and 3-syllables, respectively), an interaction replicated and generalised in Experiment 2. All facial distracters disrupted working memory in the intermediate load condition irrespective of valence, suggesting a primary and general effect of distraction caused by faces. However, sad and fearful faces tended to be less disruptive than happy faces, suggesting a secondary and specific valence effect. Working memory appears to be most vulnerable to social-emotional information at intermediate loads. At low loads, spare capacity is capable of accommodating the combinatorial load (1-syllable plus facial distracter), whereas high loads maximised capacity and deprived facial stimuli from occupying working memory slots to cause disruption. PMID:22928750

Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review.

PubMed

Romani, Maria; Vigliante, Miriam; Faedda, Noemi; Rossetti, Serena; Pezzuti, Lina; Guidetti, Vincenzo; Cardona, Francesco

2018-06-01

This review focuses on facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A systematic review, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to May 2017 pertaining to memory, face recognition, affect recognition, facial expression recognition and recall of faces in children and adolescents with ADHD. The qualitative synthesis based on different studies shows a particular focus of the research on facial affect recognition without paying similar attention to the structural encoding of facial recognition. In this review, we further investigate facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD, providing synthesis of the results observed in the literature, while detecting face recognition tasks used on face processing abilities in ADHD and identifying aspects not yet explored. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improved memory for reward cues following acute buprenorphine administration in humans.

PubMed

Syal, Supriya; Ipser, Jonathan; Terburg, David; Solms, Mark; Panksepp, Jaak; Malcolm-Smith, Susan; Bos, Peter A; Montoya, Estrella R; Stein, Dan J; van Honk, Jack

2015-03-01

In rodents, there is abundant evidence for the involvement of the opioid system in the processing of reward cues, but this system has remained understudied in humans. In humans, the happy facial expression is a pivotal reward cue. Happy facial expressions activate the brain's reward system and are disregarded by subjects scoring high on depressive mood who are low in reward drive. We investigated whether a single 0.2mg administration of the mixed mu-opioid agonist/kappa-antagonist, buprenorphine, would influence short-term memory for happy, angry or fearful expressions relative to neutral faces. Healthy human subjects (n38) participated in a randomized placebo-controlled within-subject design, and performed an emotional face relocation task after administration of buprenorphine and placebo. We show that, compared to placebo, buprenorphine administration results in a significant improvement of memory for happy faces. Our data demonstrate that acute manipulation of the opioid system by buprenorphine increases short-term memory for social reward cues. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Subliminally and Supraliminally Acquired Long-Term Memories Jointly Bias Delayed Decisions.

PubMed

Ruch, Simon; Herbert, Elizabeth; Henke, Katharina

2017-01-01

Common wisdom and scientific evidence suggest that good decisions require conscious deliberation. But growing evidence demonstrates that not only conscious but also unconscious thoughts influence decision-making. Here, we hypothesize that both consciously and unconsciously acquired memories guide decisions. Our experiment measured the influence of subliminally and supraliminally presented information on delayed (30-40 min) decision-making. Participants were presented with subliminal pairs of faces and written occupations for unconscious encoding. Following a delay of 20 min, participants consciously (re-)encoded the same faces now presented supraliminally along with either the same written occupations, occupations congruous to the subliminally presented occupations (same wage-category), or incongruous occupations (opposite wage-category). To measure decision-making, participants viewed the same faces again (with occupations absent) and decided on the putative income of each person: low, low-average, high-average, or high. Participants were encouraged to decide spontaneously and intuitively. Hence, the decision task was an implicit or indirect test of relational memory. If conscious thought alone guided decisions (= H 0 ), supraliminal information should determine decision outcomes independently of the encoded subliminal information. This was, however, not the case. Instead, both unconsciously and consciously encoded memories influenced decisions: identical unconscious and conscious memories exerted the strongest bias on income decisions, while both incongruous and congruous (i.e., non-identical) subliminally and supraliminally formed memories canceled each other out leaving no bias on decisions. Importantly, the increased decision bias following the formation of identical unconscious and conscious memories and the reduced decision bias following to the formation of non-identical memories were determined relative to a control condition, where conscious memory formation alone could influence decisions. In view of the much weaker representational strength of subliminally vs. supraliminally formed memories, their long-lasting impact on decision-making is noteworthy.

Subliminally and Supraliminally Acquired Long-Term Memories Jointly Bias Delayed Decisions

PubMed Central

Ruch, Simon; Herbert, Elizabeth; Henke, Katharina

2017-01-01

Common wisdom and scientific evidence suggest that good decisions require conscious deliberation. But growing evidence demonstrates that not only conscious but also unconscious thoughts influence decision-making. Here, we hypothesize that both consciously and unconsciously acquired memories guide decisions. Our experiment measured the influence of subliminally and supraliminally presented information on delayed (30–40 min) decision-making. Participants were presented with subliminal pairs of faces and written occupations for unconscious encoding. Following a delay of 20 min, participants consciously (re-)encoded the same faces now presented supraliminally along with either the same written occupations, occupations congruous to the subliminally presented occupations (same wage-category), or incongruous occupations (opposite wage-category). To measure decision-making, participants viewed the same faces again (with occupations absent) and decided on the putative income of each person: low, low-average, high-average, or high. Participants were encouraged to decide spontaneously and intuitively. Hence, the decision task was an implicit or indirect test of relational memory. If conscious thought alone guided decisions (= H0), supraliminal information should determine decision outcomes independently of the encoded subliminal information. This was, however, not the case. Instead, both unconsciously and consciously encoded memories influenced decisions: identical unconscious and conscious memories exerted the strongest bias on income decisions, while both incongruous and congruous (i.e., non-identical) subliminally and supraliminally formed memories canceled each other out leaving no bias on decisions. Importantly, the increased decision bias following the formation of identical unconscious and conscious memories and the reduced decision bias following to the formation of non-identical memories were determined relative to a control condition, where conscious memory formation alone could influence decisions. In view of the much weaker representational strength of subliminally vs. supraliminally formed memories, their long-lasting impact on decision-making is noteworthy. PMID:28955268

Memory Reactivation during Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Promotes Its Generalization and Integration in Cortical Stores

PubMed Central

Sterpenich, Virginie; Schmidt, Christina; Albouy, Geneviève; Matarazzo, Luca; Vanhaudenhuyse, Audrey; Boveroux, Pierre; Degueldre, Christian; Leclercq, Yves; Balteau, Evelyne; Collette, Fabienne; Luxen, André; Phillips, Christophe; Maquet, Pierre

2014-01-01

Study Objectives: Memory reactivation appears to be a fundamental process in memory consolidation. In this study we tested the influence of memory reactivation during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep on memory performance and brain responses at retrieval in healthy human participants. Participants: Fifty-six healthy subjects (28 women and 28 men, age [mean ± standard deviation]: 21.6 ± 2.2 y) participated in this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. Methods and Results: Auditory cues were associated with pictures of faces during their encoding. These memory cues delivered during REM sleep enhanced subsequent accurate recollections but also false recognitions. These results suggest that reactivated memories interacted with semantically related representations, and induced new creative associations, which subsequently reduced the distinction between new and previously encoded exemplars. Cues had no effect if presented during stage 2 sleep, or if they were not associated with faces during encoding. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that following exposure to conditioned cues during REM sleep, responses to faces during retrieval were enhanced both in a visual area and in a cortical region of multisensory (auditory-visual) convergence. Conclusions: These results show that reactivating memories during REM sleep enhances cortical responses during retrieval, suggesting the integration of recent memories within cortical circuits, favoring the generalization and schematization of the information. Citation: Sterpenich V, Schmidt C, Albouy G, Matarazzo L, Vanhaudenhuyse A, Boveroux P, Degueldre C, Leclercq Y, Balteau E, Collette F, Luxen A, Phillips C, Maquet P. Memory reactivation during rapid eye movement sleep promotes its generalization and integration in cortical stores. SLEEP 2014;37(6):1061-1075. PMID:24882901

Increased N250 amplitudes for other-race faces reflect more effortful processing at the individual level.

PubMed

Herzmann, Grit

2016-07-01

The N250 and N250r (r for repetition, signaling a difference measure of priming) has been proposed to reflect the activation of perceptual memory representations for individual faces. Increased N250r and N250 amplitudes have been associated with higher levels of familiarity and expertise, respectively. In contrast to these observations, the N250 amplitude has been found to be larger for other-race than own-race faces in recognition memory tasks. This study investigated if these findings were due to increased identity-specific processing demands for other-race relative to own-race faces and whether or not similar results would be obtained for the N250 in a repetition priming paradigm. Only Caucasian participants were available for testing and completed two tasks with Caucasian, African-American, and Chinese faces. In a repetition priming task, participants decided whether or not sequentially presented faces were of the same identity (individuation task) or same race (categorization task). Increased N250 amplitudes were found for African-American and Chinese faces relative to Caucasian faces, replicating previous results in recognition memory tasks. Contrary to the expectation that increased N250 amplitudes for other-race face would be confined to the individuation task, both tasks showed similar results. This could be due to the fact that face identity information needed to be maintained across the sequential presentation of prime and target in both tasks. Increased N250 amplitudes for other-race faces are taken to represent increased neural demands on the identity-specific processing of other-race faces, which are typically processed less holistically and less on the level of the individual. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Memory for Faces Dissociates from Memory for Location Following Anterior Temporal Lobectomy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiaravalloti, Nancy D.; Glosser, Guila

2004-01-01

It has been suggested that the right and left mesial temporal lobes are specialized for processing different types of information for long-term memory (LTM). Although findings have been consistent in regard to the dominant role of the left mesial temporal lobe (MTL) in verbal memory, the role of the right MTL in non-verbal memory remains…

The first does the work, but the third time's the charm: the effects of massed repetition on episodic encoding of multimodal face-name associations.

PubMed

Mangels, Jennifer A; Manzi, Alberto; Summerfield, Christopher

2010-03-01

In social interactions, it is often necessary to rapidly encode the association between visually presented faces and auditorily presented names. The present study used event-related potentials to examine the neural correlates of associative encoding for multimodal face-name pairs. We assessed study-phase processes leading to high-confidence recognition of correct pairs (and consistent rejection of recombined foils) as compared to lower-confidence recognition of correct pairs (with inconsistent rejection of recombined foils) and recognition failures (misses). Both high- and low-confidence retrieval of face-name pairs were associated with study-phase activity suggestive of item-specific processing of the face (posterior inferior temporal negativity) and name (fronto-central negativity). However, only those pairs later retrieved with high confidence recruited a sustained centro-parietal positivity that an ancillary localizer task suggested may index an association-unique process. Additionally, we examined how these processes were influenced by massed repetition, a mnemonic strategy commonly employed in everyday situations to improve face-name memory. Differences in subsequent memory effects across repetitions suggested that associative encoding was strongest at the initial presentation, and thus, that the initial presentation has the greatest impact on memory formation. Yet, exploratory analyses suggested that the third presentation may have benefited later memory by providing an opportunity for extended processing of the name. Thus, although encoding of the initial presentation was critical for establishing a strong association, the extent to which processing was sustained across subsequent immediate (massed) presentations may provide additional encoding support that serves to differentiate face-name pairs from similar (recombined) pairs by providing additional encoding opportunities for the less dominant stimulus dimension (i.e., name).

On the other side of the fence: effects of social categorization and spatial grouping on memory and attention for own-race and other-race faces.

PubMed

Kloth, Nadine; Shields, Susannah E; Rhodes, Gillian

2014-01-01

The term "own-race bias" refers to the phenomenon that humans are typically better at recognizing faces from their own than a different race. The perceptual expertise account assumes that our face perception system has adapted to the faces we are typically exposed to, equipping it poorly for the processing of other-race faces. Sociocognitive theories assume that other-race faces are initially categorized as out-group, decreasing motivation to individuate them. Supporting sociocognitive accounts, a recent study has reported improved recognition for other-race faces when these were categorized as belonging to the participants' in-group on a second social dimension, i.e., their university affiliation. Faces were studied in groups, containing both own-race and other-race faces, half of each labeled as in-group and out-group, respectively. When study faces were spatially grouped by race, participants showed a clear own-race bias. When faces were grouped by university affiliation, recognition of other-race faces from the social in-group was indistinguishable from own-race face recognition. The present study aimed at extending this singular finding to other races of faces and participants. Forty Asian and 40 European Australian participants studied Asian and European faces for a recognition test. Faces were presented in groups, containing an equal number of own-university and other-university Asian and European faces. Between participants, faces were grouped either according to race or university affiliation. Eye tracking was used to study the distribution of spatial attention to individual faces in the display. The race of the study faces significantly affected participants' memory, with better recognition of own-race than other-race faces. However, memory was unaffected by the university affiliation of the faces and by the criterion for their spatial grouping on the display. Eye tracking revealed strong looking biases towards both own-race and own-university faces. Results are discussed in light of the theoretical accounts of the own-race bias.

On the Other Side of the Fence: Effects of Social Categorization and Spatial Grouping on Memory and Attention for Own-Race and Other-Race Faces

PubMed Central

Kloth, Nadine; Shields, Susannah E.; Rhodes, Gillian

2014-01-01

The term “own-race bias” refers to the phenomenon that humans are typically better at recognizing faces from their own than a different race. The perceptual expertise account assumes that our face perception system has adapted to the faces we are typically exposed to, equipping it poorly for the processing of other-race faces. Sociocognitive theories assume that other-race faces are initially categorized as out-group, decreasing motivation to individuate them. Supporting sociocognitive accounts, a recent study has reported improved recognition for other-race faces when these were categorized as belonging to the participants' in-group on a second social dimension, i.e., their university affiliation. Faces were studied in groups, containing both own-race and other-race faces, half of each labeled as in-group and out-group, respectively. When study faces were spatially grouped by race, participants showed a clear own-race bias. When faces were grouped by university affiliation, recognition of other-race faces from the social in-group was indistinguishable from own-race face recognition. The present study aimed at extending this singular finding to other races of faces and participants. Forty Asian and 40 European Australian participants studied Asian and European faces for a recognition test. Faces were presented in groups, containing an equal number of own-university and other-university Asian and European faces. Between participants, faces were grouped either according to race or university affiliation. Eye tracking was used to study the distribution of spatial attention to individual faces in the display. The race of the study faces significantly affected participants' memory, with better recognition of own-race than other-race faces. However, memory was unaffected by the university affiliation of the faces and by the criterion for their spatial grouping on the display. Eye tracking revealed strong looking biases towards both own-race and own-university faces. Results are discussed in light of the theoretical accounts of the own-race bias. PMID:25180902

Hippocampal Contribution to Context Encoding across Development Is Disrupted following Early-Life Adversity.

PubMed

Lambert, Hilary K; Sheridan, Margaret A; Sambrook, Kelly A; Rosen, Maya L; Askren, Mary K; McLaughlin, Katie A

2017-02-15

Context can drastically influence responses to environmental stimuli. For example, a gunshot should provoke a different response at a public park than a shooting range. Little is known about how contextual processing and neural correlates change across human development or about individual differences related to early environmental experiences. Children ( N = 60; 8-19 years, 24 exposed to interpersonal violence) completed a context encoding task during fMRI scanning using a delayed match-to-sample design with neutral, happy, and angry facial cues embedded in realistic background scenes. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test for context-face pairings. Context memory and neural correlates of context encoding did not vary with age. Larger hippocampal volume was associated with better context memory. Posterior hippocampus was recruited during context encoding, and greater activation in this region predicted better memory for contexts paired with angry faces. Children exposed to violence had poor memory of contexts paired with angry faces, reduced hippocampal volume, and atypical neural recruitment on encoding trials with angry faces, including reduced hippocampal activation and greater functional connectivity between hippocampus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). Greater hippocampus-vlPFC connectivity was associated with worse memory for contexts paired with angry faces. Posterior hippocampus appears to support context encoding, a process that does not exhibit age-related variation from middle childhood to late adolescence. Exposure to dangerous environments in childhood is associated with poor context encoding in the presence of threat, likely due to greater vlPFC-dependent attentional narrowing on threat cues at the expense of hippocampus-dependent processing of the broader context. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The ability to use context to guide reactions to environmental stimuli promotes flexible behavior. Remarkably little research has examined how contextual processing changes across development or about influences of the early environment. We provide evidence for posterior hippocampus involvement in context encoding in youth and lack of age-related variation from middle childhood to late adolescence. Children exposed to interpersonal violence exhibited poor memory of contexts paired with angry faces and atypical neural recruitment during context encoding in the presence of threatening facial cues. Heightened attention to threat following violence exposure may come at the expense of encoding contextual information, which may ultimately contribute to pathological fear expressed in safe contexts. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/371925-10$15.00/0.

[Psychometric validation of the telephone memory test].

PubMed

Ortiz, T; Fernández, A; Martínez-Castillo, E; Maestú, F; Martínez-Arias, R; López-Ibor, J J

1999-01-01

Several pathologies (i.e. Alzheimer's disease) that courses with memory alterations, appears in a context of impaired cognitive status and mobility. In recent years, several investigations were carried out in order to design short batteries that detect those subjects under risk of dementia. Some of this batteries were also design to be administrated over the telephone, trying to overcome the accessibility limitations of this patients. In this paper we present a battery (called Autotest de Memoria) essentially composed by episodic and semantic memory tests, administered both over the telephone and face to face. This battery was employed in the cognitive assessment of healthy controls and subjects diagnosed as probable Alzheimer's disease patients. Results show the capability of this battery in order to discriminate patients and healthy controls, a great sensibility and specificity, and a nearly absolute parallelism of telephone and face to face administrations. These data led us to claim the usefulness and practicality of our so called .

Visual Working Memory Capacity for Objects from Different Categories: A Face-Specific Maintenance Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Jason H.; Peterson, Matthew S.; Thompson, James C.

2008-01-01

The capacity of visual working memory was examined when complex objects from different categories were remembered. Previous studies have not examined how visual similarity affects object memory, though it has long been known that similar-sounding phonological information interferes with rehearsal in auditory working memory. Here, experiments…

Dynamic switching between semantic and episodic memory systems.

PubMed

Kompus, Kristiina; Olsson, Carl-Johan; Larsson, Anne; Nyberg, Lars

2009-09-01

It has been suggested that episodic and semantic long-term memory systems interact during retrieval. Here we examined the flexibility of memory retrieval in an associative task taxing memories of different strength, assumed to differentially engage episodic and semantic memory. Healthy volunteers were pre-trained on a set of 36 face-name pairs over a 6-week period. Another set of 36 items was shown only once during the same time period. About 3 months after the training period all items were presented in a randomly intermixed order in an event-related fMRI study of face-name memory. Once presented items differentially activated anterior cingulate cortex and a right prefrontal region that previously have been associated with episodic retrieval mode. High-familiar items were associated with stronger activation of posterior cortices and a left frontal region. These findings fit a model of memory retrieval by which early processes determine, on a trial-by-trial basis, if the task can be solved by the default semantic system. If not, there is a dynamic shift to cognitive control processes that guide retrieval from episodic memory.

Later maturation of the beneficial than the detrimental effect of selective memory retrieval.

PubMed

Aslan, Alp; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T

2014-04-01

In adults, selective memory retrieval can both impair and improve recall of other memories. The study reported here examined whether children also show these two faces of memory retrieval. Employing a variant of the directed-forgetting task, we asked second, fourth, and seventh graders to study a list of target and nontarget words. After study, the participants received a cue to either forget or continue remembering the list. We subsequently asked some participants to recall the nontarget words before we tested their memory for the target words; for the remaining participants, we tested memory only for the target words. Prior retrieval of nontarget words impaired retrieval of to-be-remembered target words, regardless of children's age. In contrast, prior retrieval of nontarget words improved recall of to-be-forgotten target words in seventh graders, though not in fourth and second graders. These results suggest a developmental dissociation between the two faces of memory retrieval and indicate later maturation of the beneficial effect than of the detrimental effect of selective memory retrieval.

Elements of person knowledge: Episodic recollection helps us to identify people but not to recognize their faces.

PubMed

MacKenzie, Graham; Donaldson, David I

2016-12-01

Faces automatically draw attention, allowing rapid assessments of personality and likely behaviour. How we respond to people is, however, highly dependent on whether we know who they are. According to face processing models person knowledge comes from an extended neural system that includes structures linked to episodic memory. Here we use scalp recorded brain signals to demonstrate the specific role of episodic memory processes during face processing. In two experiments we recorded Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) while participants made identify, familiar or unknown responses to famous faces. ERPs revealed neural signals previously associated with episodic recollection for identify but not familiar faces. These findings provide novel evidence suggesting that recollection is central to face processing, providing one source of person knowledge that can be used to moderate the initial impressions gleaned from the core neural system that supports face recognition. Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recognition memory for emotional and neutral faces: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Johansson, Mikael; Mecklinger, Axel; Treese, Anne-Cécile

2004-12-01

This study examined emotional influences on the hypothesized event-related potential (ERP) correlates of familiarity and recollection (Experiment 1) and the states of awareness (Experiment 2) accompanying recognition memory for faces differing in facial affect. Participants made gender judgments to positive, negative, and neutral faces at study and were in the test phase instructed to discriminate between studied and nonstudied faces. Whereas old-new discrimination was unaffected by facial expression, negative faces were recollected to a greater extent than both positive and neutral faces as reflected in the parietal ERP old-new effect and in the proportion of remember judgments. Moreover, emotion-specific modulations were observed in frontally recorded ERPs elicited by correctly rejected new faces that concurred with a more liberal response criterion for emotional as compared to neutral faces. Taken together, the results are consistent with the view that processes promoting recollection are facilitated for negative events and that emotion may affect recognition performance by influencing criterion setting mediated by the prefrontal cortex.

Memory network plasticity after temporal lobe resection: a longitudinal functional imaging study

PubMed Central

Sidhu, Meneka K.; Stretton, Jason; Winston, Gavin P.; McEvoy, Andrew W.; Symms, Mark; Thompson, Pamela J.; Koepp, Matthias J.

2016-01-01

Abstract Anterior temporal lobe resection can control seizures in up to 80% of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Memory decrements are the main neurocognitive complication. Preoperative functional reorganization has been described in memory networks, but less is known of postoperative reorganization. We investigated reorganization of memory-encoding networks preoperatively and 3 and 12 months after surgery. We studied 36 patients with unilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy (19 right) before and 3 and 12 months after anterior temporal lobe resection. Fifteen healthy control subjects were studied at three equivalent time points. All subjects had neuropsychological testing at each of the three time points. A functional magnetic resonance imaging memory-encoding paradigm of words and faces was performed with subsequent out-of-scanner recognition assessments. Changes in activations across the time points in each patient group were compared to changes in the control group in a single flexible factorial analysis. Postoperative change in memory across the time points was correlated with postoperative activations to investigate the efficiency of reorganized networks. Left temporal lobe epilepsy patients showed increased right anterior hippocampal and frontal activation at both 3 and 12 months after surgery relative to preoperatively, for word and face encoding, with a concomitant reduction in left frontal activation 12 months postoperatively. Right anterior hippocampal activation 12 months postoperatively correlated significantly with improved verbal learning in patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy from preoperatively to 12 months postoperatively. Preoperatively, there was significant left posterior hippocampal activation that was sustained 3 months postoperatively at word encoding, and increased at face encoding. For both word and face encoding this was significantly reduced from 3 to 12 months postoperatively. Patients with right temporal lobe epilepsy showed increased left anterior hippocampal activation on word encoding from 3 to 12 months postoperatively compared to preoperatively. On face encoding, left anterior hippocampal activations were present preoperatively and 12 months postoperatively. Left anterior hippocampal and orbitofrontal cortex activations correlated with improvements in both design and verbal learning 12 months postoperatively. On face encoding, there were significantly increased left posterior hippocampal activations that reduced significantly from 3 to 12 months postoperatively. Postoperative changes occur in the memory-encoding network in both left and right temporal lobe epilepsy patients across both verbal and visual domains. Three months after surgery, compensatory posterior hippocampal reorganization that occurs is transient and inefficient. Engagement of the contralateral hippocampus 12 months after surgery represented efficient reorganization in both patient groups, suggesting that the contralateral hippocampus contributes to memory outcome 12 months after surgery. PMID:26754787

Undergraduate/Postgraduate Astronomy in Cambridge--A Student's Perspective.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Robin

1991-01-01

Described is the undergraduate curriculum in physics and its relationship to astronomy at Cambridge University. Discussed are the astronomical research and research establishments at Cambridge. Personal views of a student on the postgraduate research being done at Cambridge are also included. (KR)

Pronounced impairment of everyday skills and self-care in posterior cortical atrophy.

PubMed

Shakespeare, Timothy J; Yong, Keir X X; Foxe, David; Hodges, John; Crutch, Sebastian J

2015-01-01

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by progressive visual dysfunction and parietal, occipital, and occipitotemporal atrophy. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of PCA and typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) on everyday functional abilities and neuropsychiatric status. The Cambridge Behavioural Inventory-Revised was given to carers of 32 PCA and 71 tAD patients. PCA patients showed significantly greater impairment in everyday skills and self-care while the tAD group showed greater impairment in aspects of memory and orientation, and motivation. We suggest that PCA poses specific challenges for those caring for people affected by the condition.

Identity modulates short-term memory for facial emotion

PubMed Central

Galster, Murray; Kahana, Michael J.; Wilson, Hugh R.; Sekuler, Robert

2010-01-01

For some time, the relationship between processing of facial expression and facial identity has been in dispute. Using realistic synthetic faces, we reexamined this relationship for both perception and short-term memory. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to identify whether the emotional expression on a probe stimulus face matched the emotional expression on either of two remembered faces that they had just seen. The results showed that identity strongly influenced recognition short-term memory for emotional expression. In Experiment 2, subjects’ similarity/dissimilarity judgments were transformed by multidimensional scaling (MDS) into a 2-D description of the faces’ perceptual representations. Distances among stimuli in the MDS representation, which showed a strong linkage of emotional expression and facial identity, were good predictors of correct and false recognitions obtained previously in Experiment 1. The convergence of the results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that the overall structure and configuration of faces’ perceptual representations may parallel their representation in short-term memory and that facial identity modulates the representation of facial emotion, both in perception and in memory. The stimuli from this study may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental. PMID:19897794

Exploring biased attention towards body-related stimuli and its relationship with body awareness.

PubMed

Salvato, Gerardo; De Maio, Gabriele; Bottini, Gabriella

2017-12-08

Stimuli of great social relevance exogenously capture attention. Here we explored the impact of body-related stimuli on endogenous attention. Additionally, we investigate the influence of internal states on biased attention towards this class of stimuli. Participants were presented with a body, face, or chair cue to hold in memory (Memory task) or to merely attend (Priming task) and, subsequently, they were asked to find a circle in an unrelated visual search task. In the valid condition, the circle was flanked by the cue. In the invalid condition, the pre-cued picture re-appeared flanking the distracter. In the neutral condition, the cue item did not re-appear in the search display. We found that although bodies and faces benefited from a general faster visual processing compared to chairs, holding them in memory did not produce any additional advantage on attention compared to when they are merely attended. Furthermore, face cues generated larger orienting effect compared to body and chairs cues in both Memory and Priming task. Importantly, results showed that individual sensitivity to internal bodily responses predicted the magnitude of the memory-based orienting of attention to bodies, shedding new light on the relationship between body awareness and visuo-spatial attention.

Long-Lasting Effects of Subliminal Affective Priming from Facial Expressions

PubMed Central

Sweeny, Timothy D.; Grabowecky, Marcia; Suzuki, Satoru; Paller, Ken A.

2009-01-01

Unconscious processing of stimuli with emotional content can bias affective judgments. Is this subliminal affective priming merely a transient phenomenon manifested in fleeting perceptual changes, or are long-lasting effects also induced? To address this question, we investigated memory for surprise faces 24 hours after they had been shown with 30-ms fearful, happy, or neutral faces. Surprise faces subliminally primed by happy faces were initially rated as more positive, and were later remembered better, than those primed by fearful or neutral faces. Participants likely to have processed primes supraliminally did not respond differentially as a function of expression. These results converge with findings showing memory advantages with happy expressions, though here the expressions were displayed on the face of a different person, perceived subliminally, and not present at test. We conclude that behavioral biases induced by masked emotional expressions are not ephemeral, but rather can last at least 24 hours. PMID:19695907

Increasing the power for detecting impairment in older adults with the Faces subtest from Wechsler Memory Scale-III: an empirical trial.

PubMed

Levy, Boaz

2006-10-01

Empirical studies have questioned the validity of the Faces subtest from the WMS-III for detecting impairment in visual memory, particularly among the elderly. A recent examination of the test norms revealed a significant age related floor effect already emerging on Faces I (immediate recall), implying excessive difficulty in the acquisition phase among unimpaired older adults. The current study compared the concurrent validity of the Faces subtest with an alternative measure between 16 Alzheimer's patients and 16 controls. The alternative measure was designed to facilitate acquisition by reducing the sequence of item presentation. Other changes aimed at increasing the retrieval challenge, decreasing error due to guessing and standardizing the administration. Analyses converged to indicate that the alternative measure provided a considerably greater differentiation than the Faces subtest between Alzheimer's patients and controls. Steps for revising the Faces subtest are discussed.

Name and face learning in older adults: effects of level of processing, self-generation, and intention to learn.

PubMed

Troyer, Angela K; Häfliger, Andrea; Cadieux, Mélanie J; Craik, Fergus I M

2006-03-01

Many older adults are interested in strategies to help them learn new names. We examined the learning conditions that provide maximal benefit to name and face learning. In Experiment 1, consistent with levels-of-processing theory, name recall and recognition by 20 younger and 20 older adults was poorest with physical processing, intermediate with phonemic processing, and best with semantic processing. In Experiment 2, name and face learning in 20 younger and 20 older adults was maximized with semantic processing of names and physical processing of faces. Experiment 3 showed a benefit of self-generation and of intentional learning of name-face pairs in 24 older adults. Findings suggest that memory interventions should emphasize processing names semantically, processing faces physically, self-generating this information, and keeping in mind that memory for the names will be needed in the future.

Long-lasting effects of subliminal affective priming from facial expressions.

PubMed

Sweeny, Timothy D; Grabowecky, Marcia; Suzuki, Satoru; Paller, Ken A

2009-12-01

Unconscious processing of stimuli with emotional content can bias affective judgments. Is this subliminal affective priming merely a transient phenomenon manifested in fleeting perceptual changes, or are long-lasting effects also induced? To address this question, we investigated memory for surprise faces 24 h after they had been shown with 30-ms fearful, happy, or neutral faces. Surprise faces subliminally primed by happy faces were initially rated as more positive, and were later remembered better, than those primed by fearful or neutral faces. Participants likely to have processed primes supraliminally did not respond differentially as a function of expression. These results converge with findings showing memory advantages with happy expressions, though here the expressions were displayed on the face of a different person, perceived subliminally, and not present at test. We conclude that behavioral biases induced by masked emotional expressions are not ephemeral, but rather can last at least 24 h.

Obstructive sleep apnea exaggerates cognitive dysfunction in stroke patients.

PubMed

Zhang, Yan; Wang, Wanhua; Cai, Sijie; Sheng, Qi; Pan, Shenggui; Shen, Fang; Tang, Qing; Liu, Yang

2017-05-01

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is very common in stroke survivors. It potentially worsens the cognitive dysfunction and inhibits their functional recovery. However, whether OSA independently damages the cognitive function in stroke patients is unclear. A simple method for evaluating OSA-induced cognitive impairment is also missing. Forty-four stroke patients six weeks after onset and 24 non-stroke patients with snoring were recruited for the polysomnographic study of OSA and sleep architecture. Their cognitive status was evaluated with a validated Chinese version of Cambridge Prospective Memory Test. The relationship between memory deficits and respiratory, sleeping, and dementia-related clinical variables were analyzed with correlation and multiple linear regression tests. OSA significantly and independently damaged time- and event-based prospective memory in stroke patients, although it had less power than the stroke itself. The impairment of prospective memory was correlated with increased apnea-hypopnea index, decreased minimal and mean levels of peripheral oxygen saturation, and disrupted sleeping continuity (reduced sleep efficiency and increased microarousal index). The further regression analysis identified minimal levels of peripheral oxygen saturation and sleep efficiency to be the two most important predictors for the decreased time-based prospective memory in stroke patients. OSA independently contributes to the cognitive dysfunction in stroke patients, potentially through OSA-caused hypoxemia and sleeping discontinuity. The prospective memory test is a simple but sensitive method to detect OSA-induced cognitive impairment in stroke patients. Proper therapies of OSA might improve the cognitive function and increase the life quality of stroke patients. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Memantine augmentation in clozapine-refractory schizophrenia: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study.

PubMed

Veerman, S R T; Schulte, P F J; Smith, J D; de Haan, L

2016-07-01

Dysfunction of neuroplasticity due to N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor hypofunction may be a causal factor for memory and executive dysfunctioning in schizophrenia. Deregulation of NMDA transmission in the prefrontal cortex may also explain negative and positive symptoms. Clozapine augmentation with memantine targets altered NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmission in schizophrenia and showed substantial beneficial effects on several symptom domains in a small proof-of-concept study. We evaluate effects of memantine add-on treatment to clozapine for memory and executive function, and negative and positive symptoms in schizophrenia. Clozapine-treated patients with refractory schizophrenia were randomly assigned to 12 weeks of double-blind adjunctive treatment with memantine (n = 26) or placebo (n = 26). Crossover occurred after a 2-week placebo wash-out period. Primary endpoints were change from baseline to 12 weeks treatment and 14 weeks to 26 weeks treatment on memory and executive function using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and Clinical Global Impression Severity Scale (CGI-S). Side effects were assessed using the Liverpool University Neuroleptic Side-Effect Rating Scale. When compared with placebo, memantine improved a composite memory score comprising verbal recognition memory and paired associates learning task scores on the CANTAB (effect size = 0.30) and PANSS negative subscale score (effect size = 0.29). Side effects were mild and transient. In patients with clozapine-treated refractory schizophrenia, memantine addition significantly improved verbal and visual memory and negative symptoms without serious adverse effects. These results justify further investigations on long-term memantine augmentation to clozapine in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

Building America Case Study: Boiler Control Replacement for Hydronically Heated Multifamily Buildings, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Fact Sheet)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

2014-11-01

The ARIES Collaborative, a U.S. Department of Energy Building America research team, partnered with NeighborWorks America affiliate Homeowners' Rehab Inc. (HRI) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study improvements to the central hydronic heating system in one of the nonprofit's housing developments. The heating controls in the three-building, 42-unit Columbia Cambridge Alliance for Spanish Tenants housing development were upgraded. Fuel use in the development was excessive compared to similar properties. A poorly insulated thermal envelope contributed to high energy bills, but adding wall insulation was not cost-effective or practical. The more cost-effective option was improving heating system efficiency. Efficient operation of themore » heating system faced several obstacles, including inflexible boiler controls and failed thermostatic radiator valves. Boiler controls were replaced with systems that offer temperature setbacks and one that controls heat based on apartment temperature in addition to outdoor temperature. Utility bill analysis shows that post-retrofit weather-normalized heating energy use was reduced by 10%-31% (average of 19%). Indoor temperature cutoff reduced boiler runtime (and therefore heating fuel consumption) by 28% in the one building in which it was implemented. Nearly all savings were obtained during night which had a lower indoor temperature cut off (68 degrees F) than day (73 degrees F). This implies that the outdoor reset curve was appropriately adjusted for this building for daytime operation. Nighttime setback of heating system supply water temperature had no discernable impact on boiler runtime or gas bills.« less

Targeting inflammatory monocytes in sepsis-associated encephalopathy and long-term cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Andonegui, Graciela; Zelinski, Erin L; Schubert, Courtney L; Knight, Derrice; Craig, Laura A; Winston, Brent W; Spanswick, Simon C; Petri, Björn; Jenne, Craig N; Sutherland, Janice C; Nguyen, Rita; Jayawardena, Natalie; Kelly, Margaret M; Doig, Christopher J; Sutherland, Robert J; Kubes, Paul

2018-05-03

Sepsis-associated encephalopathy manifesting as delirium is a common problem in critical care medicine. In this study, patients that had delirium due to sepsis had significant cognitive impairments at 12-18 months after hospital discharge when compared with controls and Cambridge Neuropsychological Automated Test Battery-standardized scores in spatial recognition memory, pattern recognition memory, and delayed-matching-to-sample tests but not other cognitive functions. A mouse model of S. pneumoniae pneumonia-induced sepsis, which modeled numerous aspects of the human sepsis-associated multiorgan dysfunction, including encephalopathy, also revealed similar deficits in spatial memory but not new task learning. Both humans and mice had large increases in chemokines for myeloid cell recruitment. Intravital imaging of the brains of septic mice revealed increased neutrophil and CCR2+ inflammatory monocyte recruitment (the latter being far more robust), accompanied by subtle microglial activation. Prevention of CCR2+ inflammatory monocyte recruitment, but not neutrophil recruitment, reduced microglial activation and other signs of neuroinflammation and prevented all signs of cognitive impairment after infection. Therefore, therapeutically targeting CCR2+ inflammatory monocytes at the time of sepsis may provide a novel neuroprotective clinical intervention to prevent the development of persistent cognitive impairments.

Neurotoxic impact of mercury on the central nervous system evaluated by neuropsychological tests and on the autonomic nervous system evaluated by dynamic pupillometry.

PubMed

Milioni, Ana Luiza V; Nagy, Balázs V; Moura, Ana Laura A; Zachi, Elaine C; Barboni, Mirella T S; Ventura, Dora F

2017-03-01

Mercury vapor is highly toxic to the human body. The present study aimed to investigate the occurrence of neuropsychological dysfunction in former workers of fluorescent lamps factories that were exposed to mercury vapor (years after cessation of exposure), diagnosed with chronic mercurialism, and to investigate the effects of such exposure on the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) using the non-invasive method of dynamic pupillometry. The exposed group and a control group matched by age and educational level were evaluated by the Beck Depression Inventory and with the computerized neuropsychological battery CANTABeclipse - subtests of working memory (Spatial Span), spatial memory (Spatial Recognition Memory), visual memory (Pattern Recognition Memory) and action planning (Stockings of Cambridge). The ANS was assessed by dynamic pupillometry, which provides information on the operation on both the sympathetic and parasympathetic functions. Depression scores were significantly higher among the former workers when compared with the control group. The exposed group also showed significantly worse performance in most of the cognitive functions assessed. In the dynamic pupillometry test, former workers showed significantly lower response than the control group in the sympathetic response parameter (time of 75% of pupillary recovery at 10cd/m 2 luminance). Our study found indications that are suggestive of cognitive deficits and losses in sympathetic autonomic activity among patients occupationally exposed to mercury vapor. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Randomized, Double-Blind Study Assessing Changes in Cognitive Function in Indian School Children Receiving a Combination of Bacopa monnieri and Micronutrient Supplementation vs. Placebo

PubMed Central

Mitra-Ganguli, Tora; Kalita, Soumik; Bhushan, Sakshi; Stough, Con; Kean, James; Wang, Nan; Sethi, Vidhu; Khadilkar, Anuradha

2017-01-01

Several studies have indicated a chronic cognitive enhancing effect of Bacopa monnieri across different ages and cognitive impairment associated with vitamin and mineral deficiencies in children. Therefore, we investigated the effects of 4-month supplementation with a combination of B. monnieri extract and multiple micronutrients on cognitive functions in Indian school children aged 7–12 years. This was a randomized, double-blind, parallel design, single-center study in which 300 children were randomized to receive a beverage either fortified with B. monnieri and multiple micronutrients (“fortified”) or a non-fortified isocaloric equivalent (“control”) twice-daily for 4 months. Cognitive function was assessed by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Automated Test Battery (CANTAB) administered at baseline, Day 60 and Day 121. The primary endpoint was change in short-term memory (working memory) from baseline in subjects receiving “fortified” vs. “control” beverages after 4 months. Secondary endpoints included sustained attention, episodic memory, and executive function. The “fortified” beverage did not significantly improve short-term memory or any of the secondary outcomes tested relative to the “control” beverage. However, the spatial working memory “strategy” score showed significant improvement on Day 60 (difference between groups in change from baseline: −0.55; p < 0.05), but not on Day 121 due to the active intervention. Study products were well-tolerated. Reasons for these unexpected findings are discussed. PMID:29204115

Prospective Memory Impairments in Alzheimer's Disease and Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia: Clinical and Neural Correlates.

PubMed

Dermody, Nadene; Hornberger, Michael; Piguet, Olivier; Hodges, John R; Irish, Muireann

2016-01-01

Prospective memory (PM) refers to a future-oriented form of memory in which the individual must remember to execute an intended action either at a future point in time (Time-based) or in response to a specific event (Event-based). Lapses in PM are commonly exhibited in neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), however, the neurocognitive mechanisms driving these deficits remain unknown. To investigate the clinical and neural correlates of Time- and Event-based PM disruption in AD and the behavioral-variant FTD (bvFTD). Twelve AD, 12 bvFTD, and 12 healthy older Control participants completed a modified version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory test, which examines Time- and Event-based aspects of PM. All participants completed a standard neuropsychological assessment and underwent whole-brain structural MRI. AD and bvFTD patients displayed striking impairments across Time- and Event-based PM relative to Controls, however, Time-based PM was disproportionately affected in the AD group. Episodic memory dysfunction and hippocampal atrophy were found to correlate strongly with PM integrity in both patient groups, however, dissociable neural substrates were also evident for PM performance across dementia syndromes. Our study reveals the multifaceted nature of PM dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders, and suggests common and dissociable neurocognitive mechanisms, which subtend these deficits in each patient group. Future studies of PM disturbance in dementia syndromes will be crucial for the development of successful interventions to improve functional independence in the patient's daily life.

The Influence of Encoding Strategy on Episodic Memory and Cortical Activity in Schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Haut, Kristen; Csernansky, John G.; Barch, Deanna M.

2005-01-01

Background: Recent work suggests that episodic memory deficits in schizophrenia may be related to disturbances of encoding or retrieval. Schizophrenia patients appear to benefit from instruction in episodic memory strategies. We tested the hypothesis that providing effective encoding strategies to schizophrenia patients enhances encoding-related brain activity and recognition performance. Methods: Seventeen schizophrenia patients and 26 healthy comparison subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while performing incidental encoding tasks of words and faces. Subjects were required to make either deep (abstract/concrete) or shallow (alphabetization) judgments for words and deep (gender) judgments for faces, followed by subsequent recognition tests. Results: Schizophrenia and comparison subjects recognized significantly more words encoded deeply than shallowly, activated regions in inferior frontal cortex (Brodmann area 45/47) typically associated with deep and successful encoding of words, and showed greater left frontal activation for the processing of words compared with faces. However, during deep encoding and material-specific processing (words vs. faces), participants with schizophrenia activated regions not activated by control subjects, including several in prefrontal cortex. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that a deficit in use of effective strategies influences episodic memory performance in schizophrenia and that abnormalities in functional brain activation persist even when such strategies are applied. PMID:15992522

Reevaluating the Selectivity of Face-Processing Difficulties in Children and Adolescents with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ewing, Louise; Pellicano, Elizabeth; Rhodes, Gillian

2013-01-01

There are few direct examinations of whether face-processing difficulties in autism are disproportionate to difficulties with other complex non-face stimuli. Here we examined discrimination ability and memory for faces, cars, and inverted faces in children and adolescents with and without autism. Results showed that, relative to typical children,…

Effects of Aging on the Neural Correlates of Successful Item and Source Memory Encoding

PubMed Central

Dennis, Nancy A.; Hayes, Scott M.; Prince, Steven E.; Madden, David J.; Huettel, Scott A.; Cabeza, Roberto

2009-01-01

To investigate the neural basis of age-related source memory (SM) deficits, young and older adults were scanned with fMRI while encoding faces, scenes, and face-scene pairs. Successful encoding activity was identified by comparing encoding activity for subsequently remembered versus forgotten items or pairs. Age deficits in successful encoding activity in hippocampal and prefrontal regions were more pronounced for SM (pairs) compared to item memory (faces and scenes). Age-related reductions were also found in regions specialized in processing faces (fusiform face area) and scenes (parahippocampal place area), but these reductions were similar for item and SM. Functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the rest of the brain was also affected by aging; whereas connections with posterior cortices were weaker in older adults, connections with anterior cortices including prefrontal regions were stronger in older adults. Taken together, the results provide a link between SM deficits in older adults and reduced recruitment of hippocampal and prefrontal regions during encoding. The functional connectivity findings are consistent with a posterior-anterior shift with aging (PASA), previously reported in several cognitive domains and linked to functional compensation. PMID:18605869

Hippocampus Is Place of Interaction between Unconscious and Conscious Memories

PubMed Central

Züst, Marc Alain; Colella, Patrizio; Reber, Thomas Peter; Vuilleumier, Patrik; Hauf, Martinus; Ruch, Simon; Henke, Katharina

2015-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that humans can form and later retrieve new semantic relations unconsciously by way of hippocampus—the key structure also recruited for conscious relational (episodic) memory. If the hippocampus subserves both conscious and unconscious relational encoding/retrieval, one would expect the hippocampus to be place of unconscious-conscious interactions during memory retrieval. We tested this hypothesis in an fMRI experiment probing the interaction between the unconscious and conscious retrieval of face-associated information. For the establishment of unconscious relational memories, we presented subliminal (masked) combinations of unfamiliar faces and written occupations (“actor” or “politician”). At test, we presented the former subliminal faces, but now supraliminally, as cues for the reactivation of the unconsciously associated occupations. We hypothesized that unconscious reactivation of the associated occupation—actor or politician—would facilitate or inhibit the subsequent conscious retrieval of a celebrity’s occupation, which was also actor or politician. Depending on whether the reactivated unconscious occupation was congruent or incongruent to the celebrity’s occupation, we expected either quicker or delayed conscious retrieval process. Conscious retrieval was quicker in the congruent relative to a neutral baseline condition but not delayed in the incongruent condition. fMRI data collected during subliminal face-occupation encoding confirmed previous evidence that the hippocampus was interacting with neocortical storage sites of semantic knowledge to support relational encoding. fMRI data collected at test revealed that the facilitated conscious retrieval was paralleled by deactivations in the hippocampus and neocortical storage sites of semantic knowledge. We assume that the unconscious reactivation has pre-activated overlapping relational representations in the hippocampus reducing the neural effort for conscious retrieval. This finding supports the notion of synergistic interactions between conscious and unconscious relational memories in a common, cohesive hippocampal-neocortical memory space. PMID:25826338

The ties to unbind: age-related differences in feature (un)binding in working memory for emotional faces.

PubMed

Pehlivanoglu, Didem; Jain, Shivangi; Ariel, Robert; Verhaeghen, Paul

2014-01-01

In the present study, we investigated age-related differences in the processing of emotional stimuli. Specifically, we were interested in whether older adults would show deficits in unbinding emotional expression (i.e., either no emotion, happiness, anger, or disgust) from bound stimuli (i.e., photographs of faces expressing these emotions), as a hyper-binding account of age-related differences in working memory would predict. Younger and older adults completed different N-Back tasks (side-by-side 0-Back, 1-Back, 2-Back) under three conditions: match/mismatch judgments based on either the identity of the face (identity condition), the face's emotional expression (expression condition), or both identity and expression of the face (both condition). The two age groups performed more slowly and with lower accuracy in the expression condition than in the both condition, indicating the presence of an unbinding process. This unbinding effect was more pronounced in older adults than in younger adults, but only in the 2-Back task. Thus, older adults seemed to have a specific deficit in unbinding in working memory. Additionally, no age-related differences were found in accuracy in the 0-Back task, but such differences emerged in the 1-Back task, and were further magnified in the 2-Back task, indicating independent age-related differences in attention/STM and working memory. Pupil dilation data confirmed that the attention/STM version of the task (1-Back) is more effortful for older adults than younger adults.

Transcranial stimulation over the left inferior frontal gyrus increases false alarms in an associative memory task in older adults

DOE PAGES

Leach, Ryan C.; McCurdy, Matthew P.; Trumbo, Michael C.; ...

2016-07-15

Here, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potent ial tool for alleviating various forms of cognitive decline, including memory loss, in older adults. However, past effects of tDCS on cognitive ability have been mixed. One important potential moderator of tDCS effects is the baseline level of cognitive performance. We tested the effects of tDCS on face-name associative memory in older adults, who suffer from performance deficits in this task relative to younger adults. Stimulation was applied to the left inferior prefrontal cortex during encoding of face-name pairs, and memory was assessed with both a recognition and recall task. Asmore » a result, face–name memory performance was decreased with the use of tDCS. This result was driven by increased false alarms when recognizing rearranged face–name pairs.« less

Transcranial stimulation over the left inferior frontal gyrus increases false alarms in an associative memory task in older adults

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Leach, Ryan C.; McCurdy, Matthew P.; Trumbo, Michael C.

Here, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potent ial tool for alleviating various forms of cognitive decline, including memory loss, in older adults. However, past effects of tDCS on cognitive ability have been mixed. One important potential moderator of tDCS effects is the baseline level of cognitive performance. We tested the effects of tDCS on face-name associative memory in older adults, who suffer from performance deficits in this task relative to younger adults. Stimulation was applied to the left inferior prefrontal cortex during encoding of face-name pairs, and memory was assessed with both a recognition and recall task. Asmore » a result, face–name memory performance was decreased with the use of tDCS. This result was driven by increased false alarms when recognizing rearranged face–name pairs.« less

Unstable Behavior of Lasers and Other Optical Systems.

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-11-27

Isaacs, R.S. Gioggia, S.P. Adams, L.M. Narducci, L.A. Lugiato, Optical Instabilities, R.W. Boyd, M.G. Raymer , L.M. Narducci, Eds. (Cambridge...Instabilities, R.W. Boyd, M.G. Raymer , L.M. Narducci, Eds. (Cambridge University" Press, Cambridge, 1986), p. 34. "The Effect of Modulation in a Bistable System...Books "* " "OPTICAL INSTABILITIES", edited by R.W. Boyd, M.G. Raymer , and L.M. Narducci, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986. S P.-• 58

Famous face recognition, face matching, and extraversion.

PubMed

Lander, Karen; Poyarekar, Siddhi

2015-01-01

It has been previously established that extraverts who are skilled at interpersonal interaction perform significantly better than introverts on a face-specific recognition memory task. In our experiment we further investigate the relationship between extraversion and face recognition, focusing on famous face recognition and face matching. Results indicate that more extraverted individuals perform significantly better on an upright famous face recognition task and show significantly larger face inversion effects. However, our results did not find an effect of extraversion on face matching or inverted famous face recognition.

Dissociating the two faces of selective memory retrieval.

PubMed

Dobler, Ina M; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T

2012-07-01

Research in the past four decades has repeatedly shown that selective retrieval of some (non-target) memories can impair subsequent retrieval of other (target) information, a finding known as retrieval-induced forgetting. More recently, however, there is evidence that selective retrieval can both impair and enhance recall of related memories (K-H. T. Bäuml & Samenieh, 2010). To identify possible experimental dissociations between the detrimental and the beneficial effects of memory retrieval, we examined retrieval dynamics in listwise directed forgetting, varying the delay between preceding non-target and subsequent target recall. When target recall immediately followed non-target recall, we replicated the prior work and found detrimental effects of memory retrieval on to-be-remembered items but beneficial effects on to-be-forgotten items. In contrast, when a delay was introduced between non-target and target recall, the detrimental effects were present but the beneficial effects were absent. The results demonstrate a first experimental dissociation between the two effects of memory retrieval. They are consistent with a recent two-factor account of the two faces of selective memory retrieval.

The infamous among us: Enhanced reputational memory for uncooperative ingroup members.

PubMed

Hechler, Stefanie; Neyer, Franz J; Kessler, Thomas

2016-12-01

People remember uncooperative individuals better than cooperative ones. We hypothesize that this is particularly true when uncooperative individuals belong to one's ingroup, as their behavior violates positive expectations. Two studies examined the effect of minimal group categorization on reputational memory of the social behavior of particular ingroup and outgroup members. We manipulated uncooperative behavior as the unfair sharing of resources with ingroup members (Study 1), or as descriptions of cheating (Study 2). Participants evaluated several uncooperative and cooperative (and neutral) ingroup and outgroup members. In a surprise memory test, they had to recognize target faces and recall their behavior. We disentangled face recognition, reputational memory, and guessing biases with multinomial models of source monitoring. The results show enhanced reputational memory for uncooperative ingroup members, but not uncooperative outgroup members. In contrast, guessing behavior indicated that participants assumed more ingroup cooperation than outgroup cooperation. Our findings integrate prior research on memory for uncooperative person behavior and person memory in group contexts. We suggest that the ability to remember the uncooperative amidst the supposedly cooperative ingroup could stabilize intragroup cooperation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Comparison of Neuropsychological Functioning Between Adults With Early- and Late-Onset DSM-5 ADHD.

PubMed

Lin, Yu-Ju; Gau, Susan Shur-Fen

2017-09-01

We aimed to compare the visually dependent neuropsychological functioning among adults with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) ADHD who recalled symptom onset by and after age 7 and non-ADHD controls. We divided the participants, aged 17 to 40 years, into three groups-(a) ADHD, onset <7 years (early-onset, n = 142); (b) ADHD, onset between 7 and <12 years (late-onset, n = 41); (c) non-ADHD controls ( n = 148)-and compared their neuropsychological functioning, measured by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery. Both ADHD groups had deficits in attention and signal detectability, spatial working memory, and short-term spatial memory, but only the early-onset group showed deficits in alertness, set-shifting, and planning after controlling for age, sex, and psychiatric comorbidities. There was no statistical difference between the two ADHD groups in neuropsychological functioning. DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing adult ADHD are not too lax regarding neuropsychological functioning.

77 FR 64143 - Manufacturer of Controlled Substances; Notice of Registration; Cambridge Isotope Lab

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-10-18

...; Notice of Registration; Cambridge Isotope Lab By Notice dated June 18, 2012, and published in the Federal Register on June 26, 2012, 77 FR 38086, Cambridge Isotope Lab, 50 Frontage Road, Andover, Massachusetts....C. 823(a) and determined that the registration of Cambridge Isotope Lab to manufacture the listed...

To hear or not to hear: Voice processing under visual load.

PubMed

Zäske, Romi; Perlich, Marie-Christin; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2016-07-01

Adaptation to female voices causes subsequent voices to be perceived as more male, and vice versa. This contrastive aftereffect disappears under spatial inattention to adaptors, suggesting that voices are not encoded automatically. According to Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, and Viding (2004), the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli during selective attention depends on perceptual resources and working memory. Possibly due to their social significance, faces may be an exceptional domain: That is, task-irrelevant faces can escape perceptual load effects. Here we tested voice processing, to study whether voice gender aftereffects (VGAEs) depend on low or high perceptual (Exp. 1) or working memory (Exp. 2) load in a relevant visual task. Participants adapted to irrelevant voices while either searching digit displays for a target (Exp. 1) or recognizing studied digits (Exp. 2). We found that the VGAE was unaffected by perceptual load, indicating that task-irrelevant voices, like faces, can also escape perceptual-load effects. Intriguingly, the VGAE was increased under high memory load. Therefore, visual working memory load, but not general perceptual load, determines the processing of task-irrelevant voices.

Romantic relationship status biases memory of faces of attractive opposite-sex others: evidence from a reverse-correlation paradigm.

PubMed

Karremans, Johan C; Dotsch, Ron; Corneille, Olivier

2011-12-01

Previous research has demonstrated that, presumably as a way to protect one's current romantic relationship, individuals involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship tend to give lower attractiveness ratings to attractive opposite-sex others as compared to uninvolved individuals (i.e., the derogation effect). The present study importantly extends this research by examining whether romantic relationship status actually biases memory for the facial appearance of attractive (vs. unattractive) mates. To address this issue, we used a reverse-correlation technique (Mangini & Biederman, 2004), originally developed to get a visual approximation of an individual's internal representation of a target category or person. In line with the derogation effect, results demonstrated that romantically involved (vs. uninvolved) individuals indeed held a less attractive memory of a previously encountered attractive mate's face. Interestingly, they also held a more attractive memory of an unattractive mate's face as compared to uninvolved individuals. This latter finding may suggest that romantically involved (as compared to uninvolved) individuals differentiate opposite-sex others along the attractiveness dimension less. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The relationship between eye movements and subsequent recognition: Evidence from individual differences and amnesia.

PubMed

Olsen, Rosanna K; Sebanayagam, Vinoja; Lee, Yunjo; Moscovitch, Morris; Grady, Cheryl L; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Ryan, Jennifer D

2016-12-01

There is consistent agreement regarding the positive relationship between cumulative eye movement sampling and subsequent recognition, but the role of the hippocampus in this sampling behavior is currently unknown. It is also unclear whether the eye movement repetition effect, i.e., fewer fixations to repeated, compared to novel, stimuli, depends on explicit recognition and/or an intact hippocampal system. We investigated the relationship between cumulative sampling, the eye movement repetition effect, subsequent memory, and the hippocampal system. Eye movements were monitored in a developmental amnesic case (H.C.), whose hippocampal system is compromised, and in a group of typically developing participants while they studied single faces across multiple blocks. The faces were studied from the same viewpoint or different viewpoints and were subsequently tested with the same or different viewpoint. Our previous work suggested that hippocampal representations support explicit recognition for information that changes viewpoint across repetitions (Olsen et al., 2015). Here, examination of eye movements during encoding indicated that greater cumulative sampling was associated with better memory among controls. Increased sampling, however, was not associated with better explicit memory in H.C., suggesting that increased sampling only improves memory when the hippocampal system is intact. The magnitude of the repetition effect was not correlated with cumulative sampling, nor was it related reliably to subsequent recognition. These findings indicate that eye movements collect information that can be used to strengthen memory representations that are later available for conscious remembering, whereas eye movement repetition effects reflect a processing change due to experience that does not necessarily reflect a memory representation that is available for conscious appraisal. Lastly, H.C. demonstrated a repetition effect for fixed viewpoint faces but not for variable viewpoint faces, which suggests that repetition effects are differentially supported by neocortical and hippocampal systems, depending upon the representational nature of the underlying memory trace. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met genotype modulates working memory-related dorsolateral prefrontal response and performance in bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Miskowiak, K W; Kjaerstad, H L; Støttrup, M M; Svendsen, A M; Demant, K M; Hoeffding, L K; Werge, T M; Burdick, K E; Domschke, K; Carvalho, A F; Vieta, E; Vinberg, M; Kessing, L V; Siebner, H R; Macoveanu, J

2017-05-01

Cognitive dysfunction affects a substantial proportion of patients with bipolar disorder (BD), and genetic-imaging paradigms may aid in the elucidation of mechanisms implicated in this symptomatic domain. The Val allele of the functional Val158Met polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene is associated with reduced prefrontal cortex dopamine and exaggerated working memory-related prefrontal activity. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated for the first time whether the COMT Val158Met genotype modulates prefrontal activity during spatial working memory in BD. Sixty-four outpatients with BD in full or partial remission were stratified according to COMT Val158Met genotype (ValVal [n=13], ValMet [n=34], and MetMet [n=17]). The patients completed a spatial n-back working memory task during fMRI and the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) Spatial Working Memory test outside the scanner. During high working memory load (2-back vs 1-back), Val homozygotes displayed decreased activity relative to ValMet individuals, with Met homozygotes displaying intermediate levels of activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) (P=.016). Exploratory whole-brain analysis revealed a bilateral decrease in working memory-related dlPFC activity in the ValVal group vs the ValMet group which was not associated with differences in working memory performance during fMRI. Outside the MRI scanner, Val carriers performed worse in the CANTAB Spatial Working Memory task than Met homozygotes (P≤.006), with deficits being most pronounced in Val homozygotes. The association between Val allelic load, dlPFC activity and WM impairment points to a putative role of aberrant PFC dopamine tonus in the cognitive impairments in BD. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The Two Faces of Selective Memory Retrieval: Recall Specificity of the Detrimental but Not the Beneficial Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T.; Dobler, Ina M.

2015-01-01

Depending on the degree to which the original study context is accessible, selective memory retrieval can be detrimental or beneficial for the recall of other memories (Bäuml & Samenieh, 2012). Prior work has shown that the detrimental effect of memory retrieval is typically recall specific and does not arise after restudy trials, whereas…

A visual short-term memory advantage for objects of expertise

PubMed Central

Curby, Kim M.; Glazek, Kuba; Gauthier, Isabel

2014-01-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is limited, especially for complex objects. Its capacity, however, is greater for faces than for other objects, an advantage that may stem from the holistic nature of face processing. If the holistic processing explains this advantage, then object expertise—which also relies on holistic processing—should endow experts with a VSTM advantage. We compared VSTM for cars among car experts to that among car novices. Car experts, but not car novices, demonstrated a VSTM advantage similar to that for faces; this advantage was orientation-specific and was correlated with an individual's level of car expertise. Control experiments ruled out accounts based solely on verbal- or long-term memory representations. These findings suggest that the processing advantages afforded by visual expertise result in domain-specific increases in VSTM capacity, perhaps by allowing experts to maximize the use of an inherently limited VSTM system. PMID:19170473

Age Differences in Memory Span

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chi, Michelene T. H.

1977-01-01

Three experiments were conducted to determine processes underlying age differences in the level of recall in a memory-span task. Five-year-olds recalled fewer items than adults in memory-span tasks involving both familiar and unfamiliar faces, even though the use of rehearsal and recoding strategies was minimized for adults. (MS)

Who, When, and Where? Age-Related Differences on a New Memory Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sumida, Catherine A.; Holden, Heather M.; Van Etten, Emily J.; Wagner, Gabrielle M.; Hileman, Jacob D.; Gilbert, Paul E.

2016-01-01

Our study examined age-related differences on a new memory test assessing memory for "who," "when," and "where," and associations among these elements. Participants were required to remember a sequence of pictures of different faces paired with different places. Older adults remembered significantly fewer correct…

Age-related differences in brain electrical activity during extended continuous face recognition in younger children, older children and adults.

PubMed

Van Strien, Jan W; Glimmerveen, Johanna C; Franken, Ingmar H A; Martens, Vanessa E G; de Bruin, Eveline A

2011-09-01

To examine the development of recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9 years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12 years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous face recognition task (Study 1). Each face of a series of 30 faces was shown randomly six times interspersed with distracter faces. The children were required to make old vs. new decisions. Older children responded faster than younger children, but younger children exhibited a steeper decrease in latencies across the five repetitions. Older children exhibited better accuracy for new faces, but there were no age differences in recognition accuracy for repeated faces. For the N2, N400 and late positive complex (LPC), we analyzed the old/new effects (repetition 1 vs. new presentation) and the extended repetition effects (repetitions 1 through 5). Compared to older children, younger children exhibited larger frontocentral N2 and N400 old/new effects. For extended face repetitions, negativity of the N2 and N400 decreased in a linear fashion in both age groups. For the LPC, an ERP component thought to reflect recollection, no significant old/new or extended repetition effects were found. Employing the same face recognition paradigm in 20 adults (Study 2), we found a significant N400 old/new effect at lateral frontal sites and a significant LPC repetition effect at parietal sites, with LPC amplitudes increasing linearly with the number of repetitions. This study clearly demonstrates differential developmental courses for the N400 and LPC pertaining to recognition memory for faces. It is concluded that face recognition in children is mediated by early and probably more automatic than conscious recognition processes. In adults, the LPC extended repetition effect indicates that adult face recognition memory is related to a conscious and graded recollection process rather than to an automatic recognition process. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

No childhood development of viewpoint-invariant face recognition: evidence from 8-year-olds and adults.

PubMed

Crookes, Kate; Robbins, Rachel A

2014-10-01

Performance on laboratory face tasks improves across childhood, not reaching adult levels until adolescence. Debate surrounds the source of this development, with recent reviews suggesting that underlying face processing mechanisms are mature early in childhood and that the improvement seen on experimental tasks instead results from general cognitive/perceptual development. One face processing mechanism that has been argued to develop slowly is the ability to encode faces in a view-invariant manner (i.e., allowing recognition across changes in viewpoint). However, many previous studies have not controlled for general cognitive factors. In the current study, 8-year-olds and adults performed a recognition memory task with two study-test viewpoint conditions: same view (study front view, test front view) and change view (study front view, test three-quarter view). To allow quantitative comparison between children and adults, performance in the same view condition was matched across the groups by increasing the learning set size for adults. Results showed poorer memory in the change view condition than in the same view condition for both adults and children. Importantly, there was no quantitative difference between children and adults in the size of decrement in memory performance resulting from a change in viewpoint. This finding adds to growing evidence that face processing mechanisms are mature early in childhood. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Transcranial direct current stimulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during encoding improves recall but not recognition memory

DOE PAGES

Leshikar, Eric D.; Leach, Ryan C.; McCurdy, Matthew P.; ...

2017-10-19

Prior work demonstrates that application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves memory. In this study, we investigated tDCS effects on face-name associative memory using both recall and recognition tests. Participants encoded face-name pairs under either active (1.5 mA) or sham (.1 mA) stimulation applied to the scalp adjacent to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), an area known to support associative memory. Participants’ memory was then tested after study (day one) and then again after a 24-h delay (day two), to assess both immediate and delayed stimulation effects on memory. Results indicated that active relative to sham stimulation ledmore » to substantially improved recall (more than 50%) at both day one and day two. Recognition memory performance did not differ between stimulation groups at either time point. These results suggest that stimulation at encoding improves memory performance by enhancing memory for details that enable a rich recollective experience, but that these improvements are evident only under some testing conditions, especially those that rely on recollection. Altogether, stimulation of the dlPFC could have led to recall improvement through enhanced encoding from stimulation or from carryover effects of stimulation that influenced retrieval processes, or both.« less

Transcranial direct current stimulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during encoding improves recall but not recognition memory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Leshikar, Eric D.; Leach, Ryan C.; McCurdy, Matthew P.

Prior work demonstrates that application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves memory. In this study, we investigated tDCS effects on face-name associative memory using both recall and recognition tests. Participants encoded face-name pairs under either active (1.5 mA) or sham (.1 mA) stimulation applied to the scalp adjacent to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), an area known to support associative memory. Participants’ memory was then tested after study (day one) and then again after a 24-h delay (day two), to assess both immediate and delayed stimulation effects on memory. Results indicated that active relative to sham stimulation ledmore » to substantially improved recall (more than 50%) at both day one and day two. Recognition memory performance did not differ between stimulation groups at either time point. These results suggest that stimulation at encoding improves memory performance by enhancing memory for details that enable a rich recollective experience, but that these improvements are evident only under some testing conditions, especially those that rely on recollection. Altogether, stimulation of the dlPFC could have led to recall improvement through enhanced encoding from stimulation or from carryover effects of stimulation that influenced retrieval processes, or both.« less

Receiver operating characteristic analysis of age-related changes in lineup performance.

PubMed

Humphries, Joyce E; Flowe, Heather D

2015-04-01

In the basic face memory literature, support has been found for the late maturation hypothesis, which holds that face recognition ability is not fully developed until at least adolescence. Support for the late maturation hypothesis in the criminal lineup identification literature, however, has been equivocal because of the analytic approach that has been used to examine age-related changes in identification performance. Recently, receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied for the first time in the adult eyewitness memory literature to examine whether memory sensitivity differs across different types of lineup tests. ROC analysis allows for the separation of memory sensitivity from response bias in the analysis of recognition data. Here, we have made the first ROC-based comparison of adults' and children's (5- and 6-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds) memory performance on lineups by reanalyzing data from Humphries, Holliday, and Flowe (2012). In line with the late maturation hypothesis, memory sensitivity was significantly greater for adults compared with young children. Memory sensitivity for older children was similar to that for adults. The results indicate that the late maturation hypothesis can be generalized to account for age-related performance differences on an eyewitness memory task. The implications for developmental eyewitness memory research are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Weight and See: Loading Working Memory Improves Incidental Identification of Irrelevant Faces

PubMed Central

Carmel, David; Fairnie, Jake; Lavie, Nilli

2012-01-01

Are task-irrelevant stimuli processed to a level enabling individual identification? This question is central both for perceptual processing models and for applied settings (e.g., eye-witness testimony). Lavie’s load theory proposes that working memory actively maintains attentional prioritization of relevant over irrelevant information. Loading working memory thus impairs attentional prioritization, leading to increased processing of task-irrelevant stimuli. Previous research has shown that increased working memory load leads to greater interference effects from response-competing distractors. Here we test the novel prediction that increased processing of irrelevant stimuli under high working memory load should lead to a greater likelihood of incidental identification of entirely irrelevant stimuli. To test this, we asked participants to perform a word-categorization task while ignoring task-irrelevant images. The categorization task was performed during the retention interval of a working memory task with either low or high load (defined by memory set size). Following the final experimental trial, a surprise question assessed incidental identification of the irrelevant image. Loading working memory was found to improve identification of task-irrelevant faces, but not of building stimuli (shown in a separate experiment to be less distracting). These findings suggest that working memory plays a critical role in determining whether distracting stimuli will be subsequently identified. PMID:22912623

Prefrontal Neuronal Responses during Audiovisual Mnemonic Processing

PubMed Central

Hwang, Jaewon

2015-01-01

During communication we combine auditory and visual information. Neurophysiological research in nonhuman primates has shown that single neurons in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) exhibit multisensory responses to faces and vocalizations presented simultaneously. However, whether VLPFC is also involved in maintaining those communication stimuli in working memory or combining stored information across different modalities is unknown, although its human homolog, the inferior frontal gyrus, is known to be important in integrating verbal information from auditory and visual working memory. To address this question, we recorded from VLPFC while rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) performed an audiovisual working memory task. Unlike traditional match-to-sample/nonmatch-to-sample paradigms, which use unimodal memoranda, our nonmatch-to-sample task used dynamic movies consisting of both facial gestures and the accompanying vocalizations. For the nonmatch conditions, a change in the auditory component (vocalization), the visual component (face), or both components was detected. Our results show that VLPFC neurons are activated by stimulus and task factors: while some neurons simply responded to a particular face or a vocalization regardless of the task period, others exhibited activity patterns typically related to working memory such as sustained delay activity and match enhancement/suppression. In addition, we found neurons that detected the component change during the nonmatch period. Interestingly, some of these neurons were sensitive to the change of both components and therefore combined information from auditory and visual working memory. These results suggest that VLPFC is not only involved in the perceptual processing of faces and vocalizations but also in their mnemonic processing. PMID:25609614

Face-name association learning in early Alzheimer's disease: a comparison of learning methods and their underlying mechanisms.

PubMed

Bier, Nathalie; Van Der Linden, Martial; Gagnon, Lise; Desrosiers, Johanne; Adam, Stephane; Louveaux, Stephanie; Saint-Mleux, Julie

2008-06-01

This study compared the efficacy of five learning methods in the acquisition of face-name associations in early dementia of Alzheimer type (AD). The contribution of error production and implicit memory to the efficacy of each method was also examined. Fifteen participants with early AD and 15 matched controls were exposed to five learning methods: spaced retrieval, vanishing cues, errorless, and two trial-and-error methods, one with explicit and one with implicit memory task instructions. Under each method, participants had to learn a list of five face-name associations, followed by free recall, cued recall and recognition. Delayed recall was also assessed. For AD, results showed that all methods were efficient but there were no significant differences between them. The number of errors produced during the learning phases varied between the five methods but did not influence learning. There were no significant differences between implicit and explicit memory task instructions on test performances. For the control group, there were no differences between the five methods. Finally, no significant correlations were found between the performance of the AD participants in free recall and their cognitive profile, but generally, the best performers had better remaining episodic memory. Also, case study analyses showed that spaced retrieval was the method for which the greatest number of participants (four) obtained results as good as the controls. This study suggests that the five methods are effective for new learning of face-name associations in AD. It appears that early AD patients can learn, even in the context of error production and explicit memory conditions.

Recognition memory span in autopsy-confirmed Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Alzheimer's Disease.

PubMed

Salmon, David P; Heindel, William C; Hamilton, Joanne M; Vincent Filoteo, J; Cidambi, Varun; Hansen, Lawrence A; Masliah, Eliezer; Galasko, Douglas

2015-08-01

Evidence from patients with amnesia suggests that recognition memory span tasks engage both long-term memory (i.e., secondary memory) processes mediated by the diencephalic-medial temporal lobe memory system and working memory processes mediated by fronto-striatal systems. Thus, the recognition memory span task may be particularly effective for detecting memory deficits in disorders that disrupt both memory systems. The presence of unique pathology in fronto-striatal circuits in Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) compared to AD suggests that performance on the recognition memory span task might be differentially affected in the two disorders even though they have quantitatively similar deficits in secondary memory. In the present study, patients with autopsy-confirmed DLB or AD, and Normal Control (NC) participants, were tested on separate recognition memory span tasks that required them to retain increasing amounts of verbal, spatial, or visual object (i.e., faces) information across trials. Results showed that recognition memory spans for verbal and spatial stimuli, but not face stimuli, were lower in patients with DLB than in those with AD, and more impaired relative to NC performance. This was despite similar deficits in the two patient groups on independent measures of secondary memory such as the total number of words recalled from long-term storage on the Buschke Selective Reminding Test. The disproportionate vulnerability of recognition memory span task performance in DLB compared to AD may be due to greater fronto-striatal involvement in DLB and a corresponding decrement in cooperative interaction between working memory and secondary memory processes. Assessment of recognition memory span may contribute to the ability to distinguish between DLB and AD relatively early in the course of disease. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recognition Memory Span in Autopsy-Confirmed Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Alzheimer’s Disease

PubMed Central

Salmon, David P.; Heindel, William C.; Hamilton, Joanne M.; Filoteo, J. Vincent; Cidambi, Varun; Hansen, Lawrence A.; Masliah, Eliezer; Galasko, Douglas

2016-01-01

Evidence from patients with amnesia suggests that recognition memory span tasks engage both long-term memory (i.e., secondary memory) processes mediated by the diencephalic-medial temporal lobe memory system and working memory processes mediated by fronto-striatal systems. Thus, the recognition memory span task may be particularly effective for detecting memory deficits in disorders that disrupt both memory systems. The presence of unique pathology in fronto-striatal circuits in Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) compared to AD suggests that performance on the recognition memory span task might be differentially affected in the two disorders even though they have quantitatively similar deficits in secondary memory. In the present study, patients with autopsy-confirmed DLB or AD, and normal control (NC) participants, were tested on separate recognition memory span tasks that required them to retain increasing amounts of verbal, spatial, or visual object (i.e., faces) information across trials. Results showed that recognition memory spans for verbal and spatial stimuli, but not face stimuli, were lower in patients with DLB than in those with AD, and more impaired relative to NC performance. This was despite similar deficits in the two patient groups on independent measures of secondary memory such as the total number of words recalled from Long-Term Storage on the Buschke Selective Reminding Test. The disproportionate vulnerability of recognition memory span task performance in DLB compared to AD may be due to greater fronto-striatal involvement in DLB and a corresponding decrement in cooperative interaction between working memory and secondary memory processes. Assessment of recognition memory span may contribute to the ability to distinguish between DLB and AD relatively early in the course of disease. PMID:26184443

Retrieval does not always enhance suggestibility: testing can improve witness identification performance.

PubMed

LaPaglia, Jessica A; Chan, Jason C K

2012-12-01

Verbally recalling the appearance of a perpetrator and the details of an event can sometimes hinder later eyewitness memory performance. In two experiments, we investigated the effects of verbally recalling a face on people's ability to resist subsequent misinformation about that face. Participants watched a video of a theft and then completed either a recall test or a distractor activity. After a delay, some participants heard a piece of misinformation. Memory was assessed with a recall test in Experiment 1 and with a target-present lineup in Experiment 2. In both experiments, initial testing reduced eyewitness suggestibility for the face.

Nonlinear correlations impair quantification of episodic memory by mesial temporal BOLD activity.

PubMed

Klamer, Silke; Zeltner, Lena; Erb, Michael; Klose, Uwe; Wagner, Kathrin; Frings, Lars; Groen, Georg; Veil, Cornelia; Rona, Sabine; Lerche, Holger; Milian, Monika

2013-07-01

Episodic memory processes can be investigated using different functional MRI (fMRI) paradigms. The purpose of the present study was to examine correlations between neuropsychological memory test scores and BOLD signal changes during fMRI scanning using three different memory tasks. Twenty-eight right-handed healthy subjects underwent three paradigms, (a) a word pair, (b) a space-labyrinth, and (c) a face-name association paradigm. These paradigms were compared for their value in memory quantification and lateralization by calculating correlations between the BOLD signals in the mesial temporal lobe and behavioral data derived from a neuropsychological test battery. As expected, group analysis showed left-sided activation for the verbal, a tendency to right-sided activation for the spatial, and bilateral activation for the face-name paradigm. No linear correlations were observed between neuropsychological data and activation in the temporo-mesial region. However, we found significant u-shaped correlations between behavioral memory performance and activation in both the verbal and the face-name paradigms, that is, BOLD signal changes were greater not only among participants who performed best on the neuropsychological tests, but also among the poorest performers. The figural learning task did not correlate with the activations in the space-labyrinth paradigm at all. We interpreted the u-shaped correlations to be due to compensatory hippocampal activations associated with low performance when people try unsuccessfully to remember presented items. Because activation levels did not linearly increase with memory performance, the latter cannot be quantified by fMRI alone, but only be used in conjunction with neuropsychological testing. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Effect of study context on item recollection.

PubMed

Skinner, Erin I; Fernandes, Myra A

2010-07-01

We examined how visual context information provided during encoding, and unrelated to the target word, affected later recollection for words presented alone using a remember-know paradigm. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that participants had better overall memory-specifically, recollection-for words studied with pictures of intact faces than for words studied with pictures of scrambled or inverted faces. Experiment 2 replicated these results and showed that recollection was higher for words studied with pictures of faces than when no image accompanied the study word. In Experiment 3 participants showed equivalent memory for words studied with unique faces as for those studied with a repeatedly presented face. Results suggest that recollection benefits when visual context information high in meaningful content accompanies study words and that this benefit is not related to the uniqueness of the context. We suggest that participants use elaborative processes to integrate item and meaningful contexts into ensemble information, improving subsequent item recollection.

The influence of working memory on the anger superiority effect.

PubMed

Moriya, Jun; Koster, Ernst H W; De Raedt, Rudi

2014-01-01

The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a colour and then searched for differently coloured facial expressions. Just holding the colour information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the colour of a target face matched the colour held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.

Association of enhanced limbic response to threat with decreased cortical facial recognition memory response in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Satterthwaite, Theodore D.; Wolf, Daniel H.; Loughead, James; Ruparel, Kosha; Valdez, Jeffrey N.; Siegel, Steven J.; Kohler, Christian G.; Gur, Raquel E.; Gur, Ruben C.

2014-01-01

Objective Recognition memory of faces is impaired in patients with schizophrenia, as is the neural processing of threat-related signals, but how these deficits interact to produce symptoms is unclear. Here we used an affective face recognition paradigm to examine possible interactions between cognitive and affective neural systems in schizophrenia. Methods fMRI (3T) BOLD response was examined in 21 controls and 16 patients during a two-choice recognition task using images of human faces. Each target face had previously been displayed with a threatening or non-threatening affect, but here were displayed with neutral affect. Responses to successful recognition and for the effect of previously threatening vs. non-threatening affect were evaluated, and correlations with total BPRS examined. Functional connectivity analyses examined the relationship between activation in the amygdala and cortical regions involved in recognition memory. Results Patients performed the task more slowly than controls. Controls recruited the expected cortical regions to a greater degree than patients, and patients with more severe symptoms demonstrated proportionally less recruitment. Increased symptoms were also correlated with augmented amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex response to threatening faces. Controls exhibited a negative correlation between activity in the amygdala and cortical regions involved in cognition, while patients showed a weakening of that relationship. Conclusions Increased symptoms were related to an enhanced threat response in limbic regions and a diminished recognition memory response in cortical regions, supporting a link between two brain systems often examined in isolation. This finding suggests that abnormal processing of threat-related signals in the environment may exacerbate cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. PMID:20194482

Medial temporal lobe contributions to short-term memory for faces

PubMed Central

Race, Elizabeth; LaRocque, Karen F.; Keane, Margaret M.; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-01-01

The role of the medial temporal lobes (MTL) in short-term memory (STM) remains a matter of debate. While imaging studies commonly show hippocampal activation during short-delay memory tasks, evidence from amnesic patients with MTL lesions is mixed. It has been argued that apparent STM impairments in amnesia may reflect long-term memory (LTM) contributions to performance. We challenge this conclusion by demonstrating that MTL amnesic patients show impaired delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) for faces in a task that meets both a traditional delay-based and a recently proposed distractor-based criterion for classification as a STM task. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that our face DMS task meets the proposed distractor-based criterion for STM classification, in that extensive processing of delay-period distractor stimuli disrupts performance of healthy individuals. In Experiment 2, MTL amnesic patients with lesions extending into anterior subhippocampal cortex, but not patients with lesions limited to the hippocampus, show impaired performance on this task without distraction at delays as short as 8s, within temporal range of delay-based STM classification, in the context of intact perceptual matching performance. Experiment 3 provides support for the hypothesis that STM for faces relies on configural processing by showing that the extent to which healthy participants’ performance is disrupted by interference depends on the configural demands of the distractor task. Together, these findings are consistent with the notion that the amnesic impairment in STM for faces reflects a deficit in configural processing associated with subhippocampal cortices and provide novel evidence that the MTL supports cognition beyond the LTM domain. PMID:23937185

REM sleep and emotional face memory in typically-developing children and children with autism.

PubMed

Tessier, Sophie; Lambert, Andréane; Scherzer, Peter; Jemel, Boutheina; Godbout, Roger

2015-09-01

Relationship between REM sleep and memory was assessed in 13 neurotypical and 13 children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A neutral/positive/negative face recognition task was administered the evening before (learning and immediate recognition) and the morning after (delayed recognition) sleep. The number of rapid eye movements (REMs), beta and theta EEG activity over the visual areas were measured during REM sleep. Compared to neurotypical children, children with ASD showed more theta activity and longer reaction time (RT) for correct responses in delayed recognition of neutral faces. Both groups showed a positive correlation between sleep and performance but different patterns emerged: in neurotypical children, accuracy for recalling neutral faces and overall RT improvement overnight was correlated with EEG activity and REMs; in children with ASD, overnight RT improvement for positive and negative faces correlated with theta and beta activity, respectively. These results suggest that neurotypical and children with ASD use different sleep-related brain networks to process faces. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Facial biases on vocal perception and memory.

PubMed

Boltz, Marilyn G

2017-06-01

Does a speaker's face influence the way their voice is heard and later remembered? This question was addressed through two experiments where in each, participants listened to middle-aged voices accompanied by faces that were either age-appropriate, younger or older than the voice or, as a control, no face at all. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated each voice on various acoustical dimensions and speaker characteristics. The results showed that facial displays influenced perception such that the same voice was heard differently depending on the age of the accompanying face. Experiment 2 further revealed that facial displays led to memory distortions that were age-congruent in nature. These findings illustrate that faces can activate certain social categories and preconceived stereotypes that then influence vocal and person perception in a corresponding fashion. Processes of face/voice integration are very similar to those of music/film, indicating that the two areas can mutually inform one another and perhaps, more generally, reflect a centralized mechanism of cross-sensory integration. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities.

PubMed

Gawrylowicz, Julie; Gabbert, Fiona; Carson, Derek; Lindsay, William R; Hancock, Peter J B

2013-09-01

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) are as likely as the general population to find themselves in the situation of having to identify and/or describe a perpetrator's face to the police. However, limited verbal and memory abilities in people with ID might prevent them to engage in standard police procedures. Two experiments examined face recognition and description abilities in people with mild intellectual disabilities (mID) and compared their performance with that of people without ID. Experiment 1 used three old/new face recognition tasks. Experiment 2 consisted of two face description tasks, during which participants had to verbally describe faces from memory and with the target in view. Participants with mID performed significantly poorer on both recognition and recall tasks than control participants. However, their group performance was better than chance and they showed variability in performance depending on the measures introduced. The practical implications of these findings in forensic settings are discussed. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Can Training Enhance Face Cognition Abilities in Middle-Aged Adults?

PubMed Central

Dolzycka, Dominika; Herzmann, Grit; Sommer, Werner; Wilhelm, Oliver

2014-01-01

Face cognition is a crucial skill for social interaction and shows large individual differences in healthy adults, suggesting a possibility for improvement in some. We developed and tested specific training procedures for the accuracy of face memory and the speed of face cognition. Two groups each of 20 healthy middle-aged trainees practiced for 29 daily sessions of 15 minutes duration with different computerized home-based training procedures. In addition, 20 matched and 59 non-matched controls were included. Face cognition speed training enhanced performance during the training and transferred to the latent factor level as measured in a pre-post comparison. Persistence of the training effect was evidenced at the manifest level after three months. However, the training procedure influenced the speed of processing object stimuli to the same extent as face stimuli and therefore seems to have affected a more general ability of processing complex visual stimuli and not only faces. No effects of training on the accuracy of face memory were found. This study demonstrates that face-specific abilities may be hard to improve but also shows the plasticity of the speed of processing complex visual stimuli – for the first time in middle-aged, normal adults. PMID:24632743

Positive and negative emotional contexts unevenly predict episodic memory.

PubMed

Martínez-Galindo, Joyce Graciela; Cansino, Selene

2015-09-15

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the recognition of faces with neutral expressions differs when they are encoded under different emotional contexts (positive, negative or non-emotional). The effects of the emotional valence context on the subsequent memory effect (SME) and the autonomic responses were also examined. Twenty-eight participants performed a betting-game task in which the faces of their virtual opponents were presented in each trial. The probability of winning or losing was manipulated to generate positive or negative contexts, respectively. Additionally, the participants performed the same task without betting as a non-emotional condition. After the encoding phase, an old/new paradigm was performed for the faces of the virtual opponents. The recognition was superior for the faces encoded in the positive contexts than for the faces encoded in the non-emotional contexts. The skin conductance response amplitude was equivalent for both of the emotional contexts. The N170 and P300 components at occipital sites and the frontal slow wave manifested SMEs that were modulated by positive contexts; neither negative nor non-emotional contexts influenced these effects. The behavioral and neurophysiological data demonstrated that positive contexts are stronger predictors of episodic memory than negative or non-emotional contexts. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Exploring the Perceptual Spaces of Faces, Cars and Birds in Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tanaka, James W.; Meixner, Tamara L.; Kantner, Justin

2011-01-01

While much developmental research has focused on the strategies that children employ to recognize faces, less is known about the principles governing the organization of face exemplars in perceptual memory. In this study, we tested a novel, child-friendly paradigm for investigating the organization of face, bird and car exemplars. Children ages…

The role of the hippocampus in recognition memory.

PubMed

Bird, Chris M

2017-08-01

Many theories of declarative memory propose that it is supported by partially separable processes underpinned by different brain structures. The hippocampus plays a critical role in binding together item and contextual information together and processing the relationships between individual items. By contrast, the processing of individual items and their later recognition can be supported by extrahippocampal regions of the medial temporal lobes (MTL), particularly when recognition is based on feelings of familiarity without the retrieval of any associated information. These theories are domain-general in that "items" might be words, faces, objects, scenes, etc. However, there is mixed evidence that item recognition does not require the hippocampus, or that familiarity-based recognition can be supported by extrahippocampal regions. By contrast, there is compelling evidence that in humans, hippocampal damage does not affect recognition memory for unfamiliar faces, whilst recognition memory for several other stimulus classes is impaired. I propose that regions outside of the hippocampus can support recognition of unfamiliar faces because they are perceived as discrete items and have no prior conceptual associations. Conversely, extrahippocampal processes are inadequate for recognition of items which (a) have been previously experienced, (b) are conceptually meaningful, or (c) are perceived as being comprised of individual elements. This account reconciles findings from primate and human studies of recognition memory. Furthermore, it suggests that while the hippocampus is critical for binding and relational processing, these processes are required for item recognition memory in most situations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Detecting individual memories through the neural decoding of memory states and past experience.

PubMed

Rissman, Jesse; Greely, Henry T; Wagner, Anthony D

2010-05-25

A wealth of neuroscientific evidence indicates that our brains respond differently to previously encountered than to novel stimuli. There has been an upswell of interest in the prospect that functional MRI (fMRI), when coupled with multivariate data analysis techniques, might allow the presence or absence of individual memories to be detected from brain activity patterns. This could have profound implications for forensic investigations and legal proceedings, and thus the merits and limitations of such an approach are in critical need of empirical evaluation. We conducted two experiments to investigate whether neural signatures of recognition memory can be reliably decoded from fMRI data. In Exp. 1, participants were scanned while making explicit recognition judgments for studied and novel faces. Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed a robust ability to classify whether a given face was subjectively experienced as old or new, as well as whether recognition was accompanied by recollection, strong familiarity, or weak familiarity. Moreover, a participant's subjective mnemonic experiences could be reliably decoded even when the classifier was trained on the brain data from other individuals. In contrast, the ability to classify a face's objective old/new status, when holding subjective status constant, was severely limited. This important boundary condition was further evidenced in Exp. 2, which demonstrated that mnemonic decoding is poor when memory is indirectly (implicitly) probed. Thus, although subjective memory states can be decoded quite accurately under controlled experimental conditions, fMRI has uncertain utility for objectively detecting an individual's past experiences.

The impact of threat of shock-induced anxiety on memory encoding and retrieval

PubMed Central

Bolton, Sorcha

2017-01-01

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health disorders, and daily transient feelings of anxiety (or “stress”) are ubiquitous. However, the precise impact of both transient and pathological anxiety on higher-order cognitive functions, including short- and long-term memory, is poorly understood. A clearer understanding of the anxiety–memory relationship is important as one of the core symptoms of anxiety, most prominently in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is intrusive reexperiencing of traumatic events in the form of vivid memories. This study therefore aimed to examine the impact of induced anxiety (threat of shock) on memory encoding and retrieval. Eighty-six healthy participants completed tasks assessing: visuospatial working memory, verbal recognition, face recognition, and associative memory. Critically, anxiety was manipulated within-subjects: information was both encoded and retrieved under threat of shock and safe (no shock) conditions. Results revealed that visuospatial working memory was enhanced when information was encoded and subsequently retrieved under threat, and that threat impaired the encoding of faces regardless of the condition in which it was retrieved. Episodic memory and verbal short-term recognition were, however, unimpaired. These findings indicate that transient anxiety in healthy individuals has domain-specific, rather than domain-general, impacts on memory. Future studies would benefit from expanding these findings into anxiety disorder patients to delineate the differences between adaptive and maladaptive responding. PMID:28916628

Freyinae, a major new subfamily of Neotropical jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae).

PubMed

Edwards, G B

2015-11-02

Freyinae, new subfamily, is described for a group of genera of Neotropical jumping spiders that can be distinguished from other non-ant mimic salticoid Neotropical salticids by having the following three morphological features: a slightly more elongate carapace, a distinctive prolateral tibial macrosetae arrangement (medially placed subdistal and subproximal macrosetae, with a subdorsal medial macroseta in some males), and an unusual dorsoventrally thick tegulum basal division (although one or two of these features are sometimes lost). It includes 20 genera previously considered valid, of which 19 are retained: Akela Peckham & Peckham, 1896, Aphirape C.L. Koch, 1850, Asaracus C.L. Koch, 1846, Capidava Simon, 1902, Chira Peckham & Peckham, 1896, Edilemma Ruiz & Brescovit, 2006, Eustiromastix Simon, 1902, Freya C.L. Koch, 1850, Frigga C.L. Koch, 1850, Kalcerrytus Galiano, 2000, Nycerella Galiano, 1982, Onofre Ruiz & Brescovit, 2007, Pachomius Peckham & Peckham, 1896, Phiale C.L. Koch, 1846, Rishaschia Makhan, 2006, Sumampattus Galiano, 1983, Trydarssus Galiano, 1995, Tullgrenella Mello‑Leitão, 1941, and Wedoquella Galiano, 1984. Romitia Caporiacco, 1947 (and its synonym Uspachus Galiano, 1995) is synonymized with Pachomius, new synonymy. New genera described in the subfamily are: Drizztius, Leptofreya, Megafreya, Philira, Tarkas, Triggella, and Xanthofreya. The following nomenclatorial changes are made: New synonyms: Freya demarcata Chamberlin & Ivie, 1936 = Freya (sub Cyrene) albosignata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901); Freya (sub Cyrene) grisea (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Freya (sub Cyrene) infuscata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901); Freya (sub Cyrene) emarginata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) and Nycerella (sub Heraclea) sanguinea paradoxa (Peckham & Peckham, 1896) = Nycerella (sub Heraclea) sanguinea (Peckham & Peckham, 1896); Pachomius (sub Phiale) maculosus (Chickering, 1946) = Phiale (sub Cyrene) bilobata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901); Phiale (sub Cyrene) mediocava (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Freya (sub Cyrene) maculatipes (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901); Phiale (sub Cyrene) simplicicava (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Freya (sub Cyrene) bifurcata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901). New combinations: Capidava rufithorax Simon, 1902 = Drizztius rufithorax; Freya frontalis Banks, 1929 = Eustiromastix frontalis; Chira (sub Attus) spinipes (Taczanowski, 1872) = Eustiromastix spinipes; Freya (sub Euophrys) ambigua (C.L. Koch, 1846) = Leptofreya ambigua; Freya (sub Cyrene) bifurcata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Leptofreya bifurcata; Freya (sub Cyrene) laticava (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Leptofreya laticava; Freya (sub Cyrene) longispina (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Leptofreya longispina; Phiale (sub Cyrene) bilobata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Pachomius bilo-batus; Phiale (sub Cyrene) hieroglyphica (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Pachomius hieroglyphicus; Phiale (sub Cyrene) niveoguttata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Pachomius niveoguttatus; Romitia (sub Euophrys) albipalpis (Taczanowski, 1878) = Pachomius albipalpis; Romitia (sub Euophrys) andina (Taczanowski, 1878) = Pachomius andinus; Romitia (sub Uspachus) bahiensis (Galiano, 1995) = Pachomius bahiensis; Romitia (sub Uspachus) columbiana (Galiano, 1995) = Pachomius columbianus; Romitia (sub Uspachus) juquiaensis (Galiano, 1995) = Pachomius juquiaensis; Romitia (sub Phiale) ministerialis (C.L. Koch, 1846) = Pachomius ministerialis; Romitia (sub Uspachus) misionensis (Galiano, 1995) = Pachomius misionensis; Romitia nigra Caporiacco, 1947 = Pachomius nigrus; Romitia (sub Uspachus) patellaris (Galiano, 1995) = Pachomius patellaris; Chira (sub Diagondas) micans (Simon, 1902) = Philira micans; Chira superba Caporiacco, 1947 = Philira superba; Freya (sub Cyrene) maculatipes (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Tarkas maculatipes; Freya (sub Cyrene) bifida (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Triggella bifida; Freya infuscata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Triggella infuscata; Freya (sub Cyrene) minuta (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Triggella minuta; Freya (sub Cyrene) albosignata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Xanthofreya albosignata; Freya arraijanica Chickering, 1946 = Xanthofreya arraijanica; Phiale (sub Cyrene) bicuspidata (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) = Xantho-freya bicuspidata; Freya chionopogon Simon, 1902 = Xanthofreya chionopogon; Freya (sub Heraclea) rustica (Peckham & Peckham, 1896) = Xanthofreya rustica. Combinations restored: Phiale (sub Pachomius) flavescens (Peckham & Peckham, 1896) = Pachomius flavescens; Phiale (sub Pachomius) similis (Peckham & Peckham, 1896) = Pachomius similis. Invalid name: Freya dyali Roewer 1951 is an invalid replacement name for Euophrys trifasciata "Dyal 1935", which was a redescription of Euophrys trifasciata C.L. Koch, 1846, not a homonym. New species: Drizztius geminensis. First female descriptions and transfers of mismatched females: First descriptions for Asaracus megacephalus C.L. Koch, 1846, Capidava biuncata Simon, 1902, and Phiale formosa (Banks, 1909); the true female of Eustiromastix spinipes is described, and its mismatched female is identified as the female of Eustiromastix falcatus Galiano, 1981; the mismatched female of Freya (sub Cyrene) prominens (F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901) is identified as the female of Xanthofreya rustica; the misidentified female of X. rustica is identified as the female of Leptofreya bifurcata. Lectotypes: designated for Cyrene bifida F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1901 and Cyrene formosa Banks, 1909. New synapomorphy: a constricted proximal end of the cymbium of the male palp is an apparent new synapomorphy for Salticoida.

1. DEADWOOD CREEK BRIDGE FACING SOUTHWEST. MOUNT RAINIER AND EMMONS ...

Library of Congress Historic Buildings Survey, Historic Engineering Record, Historic Landscapes Survey

1. DEADWOOD CREEK BRIDGE FACING SOUTHWEST. MOUNT RAINIER AND EMMONS GLACIER VISIBLE IN BACKGROUND. - Deadwood Creek Bridge, Spanning Deadwood Creek on Mather Memorial Parkway, Longmire, Pierce County, WA

Enhancing effects of nicotine and impairing effects of scopolamine on distinct aspects of performance in computerized attention and working memory tasks in marmoset monkeys.

PubMed

Spinelli, Simona; Ballard, Theresa; Feldon, Joram; Higgins, Guy A; Pryce, Christopher R

2006-08-01

With the CAmbridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), computerized neuropsychological tasks can be presented on a touch-sensitive computer screen, and this system has been used to assess cognitive processes in neuropsychiatric patients, healthy volunteers, and species of non-human primate, primarily the rhesus macaque and common marmoset. Recently, we reported that the common marmoset, a small-bodied primate, can be trained to a high and stable level of performance on the CANTAB five-choice serial reaction time (5-CSRT) task of attention, and a novel task of working memory, the concurrent delayed match-to-position (CDMP) task. Here, in order to increase understanding of the specific cognitive demands of these tasks and the importance of acetylcholine to their performance, the effects of systemic delivery of the muscarinic receptor antagonist scopolamine and the nicotinic receptor agonist nicotine were studied. In the 5-CSRT task, nicotine enhanced performance in terms of increased sustained attention, whilst scopolamine led to increased omissions despite a high level of orientation to the correct stimulus location. In the CDMP task, scopolamine impaired performance at two stages of the task that differ moderately in terms of memory retention load but both of which are likely to require working memory, including interference-coping, abilities. Nicotine tended to enhance performance at the long-delay stage specifically but only against a background of relatively low baseline performance. These data are consistent with a dissociation of the roles of muscarinic and nicotinic cholinergic receptors in the regulation of both sustained attention and working memory in primates.

Rhesus monkeys employ a procedural strategy to reduce working memory load in a self-ordered spatial search task

PubMed Central

Taffe, Michael A.; Taffe, William J.

2011-01-01

Several nonhuman primate species have been reported to employ a distance-minimizing, traveling salesman-like, strategy during foraging as well as in experimental spatial search tasks involving lesser amounts of locomotion. Spatial sequencing may optimize performance by reducing reference or episodic memory loads, locomotor costs, competition or other demands. A computerized self-ordered spatial search (SOSS) memory task has been adapted from a human neuropsychological testing battery (CANTAB, Cambridge Cognition, Ltd) for use in monkeys. Accurate completion of a trial requires sequential responses to colored boxes in two or more spatial locations without repetition of a previous location. Marmosets have been reported to employ a circling pattern of search, suggesting spontaneous adoption of a strategy to reduce working memory load. In this study the SOSS performance of rhesus monkeys was assessed to determine if the use of a distance-minimizing search path enhances accuracy. A novel strategy score, independent of the trial difficulty and arrangement of boxes, has been devised. Analysis of the performance of 21 monkeys trained on SOSS over two years shows that a distance-minimizing search strategy is associated with improved accuracy. This effect is observed within individuals as they improve over many cumulative sessions of training on the task and across individuals at any given level of training. Erroneous trials were associated with a failure to deploy the strategy. It is concluded that the effect of utilizing the strategy on this locomotion-free, laboratory task is to enhance accuracy by reducing demands on spatial working memory resources. PMID:21840507

Evaluation of a brief anti-stigma campaign in Cambridge: do short-term campaigns work?

PubMed

Evans-Lacko, Sara; London, Jillian; Little, Kirsty; Henderson, Claire; Thornicroft, Graham

2010-06-14

In view of the high costs of mass-media campaigns, it is important to understand whether it is possible for a media campaign to have significant population effects over a short period of time. This paper explores this question specifically in reference to stigma and discrimination against people with mental health problems using the Time to Change Cambridge anti-stigma campaign as an example. 410 face-to-face interviews were performed pre, during and post campaign activity to assess campaign awareness and mental health-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. Although campaign awareness was not sustained following campaign activity, significant and sustained shifts occurred for mental health-related knowledge items. Specifically, there was a 24% (p < 0.001) increase in persons agreeing with the statement: If a friend had a mental health problem, I know what advice to give them to get professional help, following the campaign. Additionally, for the statement: Medication can be an effective treatment for people with mental health problems, there was a 10% rise (p = 0.05) in the proportion of interviewees responding 'agree' or 'strongly agree' following the campaign. These changes, however, were not evident for attitudinal or behaviour related questions. Although these results only reflect the impact of one small scale campaign, these preliminary findings suggest several considerations for mass-media campaign development and evaluation strategies such as: (1) Aiming to influence outcomes pertaining to knowledge in the short term; (2) Planning realistic and targeted outcomes over the short, medium and long term during sustained campaigns; and (3) Monitoring indirect campaign effects such as social discourse or other social networking/contact in the evaluation.

Macroscopic Neural Theories of Cognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-03-01

Autobiographical Memory -- 51% • Emotional Face Processing -- 14% • Single Word Reading -- 45% • N-Back Working Memory – 41% 22 A graphic comparison of...seven meta-analyses carried out for working memory is shown in Table 2. The results of this comparison were also clear—there was substantial...variation among the areas reported by the seven meta-analyses. Table 2. A Comparison of Seven Meta-analyses dealing with Working Memory . (Uttal, 2013

Can Implicit Associations Distinguish True and False Eyewitness Memory? Development and Preliminary Testing of the IATe.

PubMed

Helm, Rebecca K; Ceci, Stephen J; Burd, Kayla A

2016-11-01

Eyewitness identification has been shown to be fallible and prone to false memory. In this study we develop and test a new method to probe the mechanisms involved in the formation of false memories in this area, and determine whether a particular memory is likely to be true or false. We created a seven-step procedure based on the Implicit Association Test to gauge implicit biases in eyewitness identification (the IATe). We show that identification errors may result from unconscious bias caused by implicit associations evoked by a given face. We also show that implicit associations between negative attributions such as guilt and eyewitnesses' final pick from a line-up can help to distinguish between true and false memory (especially where the witness has been subject to the suggestive nature of a prior blank line-up). Specifically, the more a witness implicitly associates an individual face with a particular crime, the more likely it is that a memory they have for that person committing the crime is false. These findings are consistent with existing findings in the memory and neuroscience literature showing that false memories can be caused by implicit associations that are outside conscious awareness. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Source and destination memory in face-to-face interaction: A multinomial modeling approach.

PubMed

Fischer, Nele M; Schult, Janette C; Steffens, Melanie C

2015-06-01

Arguing that people are often in doubt concerning to whom they have presented what information, Gopie and MacLeod (2009) introduced a new memory component, destination memory: remembering the destination of output information (i.e., "Who did you tell this to?"). They investigated source (i.e., "Who told you that?") versus destination memory in computer-based imagined interactions. The present study investigated destination memory in real interaction situations. In 2 experiments with mixed-gender (N = 53) versus same-gender (N = 89) groups, source and destination memory were manipulated by creating a setup similar to speed dating. In dyads, participants completed phrase fragments with personal information, taking turns. At recognition, participants decided whether fragments were new or old and, if old, whether they were listened to or spoken and which depicted person was the source or the destination of the information. A multinomial model was used for analyses. Source memory significantly exceeded destination memory, whereas information itself was better remembered in the destination than in the source condition. These findings corroborate the trade-off hypothesis: Context is better remembered in input than in output events, but information itself is better remembered in output than in input events. We discuss the implications of these findings for real-world conversation situations. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on associative memory

DOE PAGES

Matzen, Laura E.; Trumbo, Michael C.; Leach, Ryan C.; ...

2015-07-30

Associative memory refers to remembering the association between two items, such as a face and a name. It is a crucial part of daily life, but it is also one of the first aspects of memory performance that is impacted by aging and by Alzheimer’s disease. Evidence suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve memory performance, but few tDCS studies have investigated its impact on associative memory. In addition, no prior study of the effects of tDCS on memory performance has systematically evaluated the impact of tDCS on different types of memory assessments, such as recognition and recallmore » tests. In this study, we measured the effects of tDCS on associative memory performance in healthy adults, using both recognition and recall tests. Participants studied face-name pairs while receiving either active (30 minutes, 2 mA) or sham (30 minutes, 0.1 mA) stimulation with the anode placed at F9 and the cathode placed on the contralateral upper arm. Participants in the active stimulation group performed significantly better on the recall test than participants in the sham group, recalling 50% more names, on average, and making fewer recall errors. However, the two groups did not differ significantly in terms of their performance on the recognition memory test. This investigation provides evidence that stimulation at the time of study improves associative memory encoding, but that this memory benefit is evident only under certain retrieval conditions.« less

Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on associative memory.

PubMed

Matzen, Laura E; Trumbo, Michael C; Leach, Ryan C; Leshikar, Eric D

2015-10-22

Associative memory refers to remembering the association between two items, such as a face and a name. It is a crucial part of daily life, but it is also one of the first aspects of memory performance that is impacted by aging and by Alzheimer's disease. Evidence suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve memory performance, but few tDCS studies have investigated its impact on associative memory. In addition, no prior study of the effects of tDCS on memory performance has systematically evaluated the impact of tDCS on different types of memory assessments, such as recognition and recall tests. In this study, we measured the effects of tDCS on associative memory performance in healthy adults, using both recognition and recall tests. Participants studied face-name pairs while receiving either active (30 min, 2 mA) or sham (30 min, 0.1 mA) stimulation with the anode placed at F9 and the cathode placed on the contralateral upper arm. Participants in the active stimulation group performed significantly better on the recall test than participants in the sham group, recalling 50% more names, on average, and making fewer recall errors. However, the two groups did not differ significantly in terms of their performance on the recognition memory test. This investigation provides evidence that stimulation at the time of study improves associative memory encoding, but that this memory benefit is evident only under certain retrieval conditions. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of non-invasive brain stimulation on associative memory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Matzen, Laura E.; Trumbo, Michael C.; Leach, Ryan C.

Associative memory refers to remembering the association between two items, such as a face and a name. It is a crucial part of daily life, but it is also one of the first aspects of memory performance that is impacted by aging and by Alzheimer’s disease. Evidence suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve memory performance, but few tDCS studies have investigated its impact on associative memory. In addition, no prior study of the effects of tDCS on memory performance has systematically evaluated the impact of tDCS on different types of memory assessments, such as recognition and recallmore » tests. In this study, we measured the effects of tDCS on associative memory performance in healthy adults, using both recognition and recall tests. Participants studied face-name pairs while receiving either active (30 minutes, 2 mA) or sham (30 minutes, 0.1 mA) stimulation with the anode placed at F9 and the cathode placed on the contralateral upper arm. Participants in the active stimulation group performed significantly better on the recall test than participants in the sham group, recalling 50% more names, on average, and making fewer recall errors. However, the two groups did not differ significantly in terms of their performance on the recognition memory test. This investigation provides evidence that stimulation at the time of study improves associative memory encoding, but that this memory benefit is evident only under certain retrieval conditions.« less

Neuroanatomical substrates involved in unrelated false facial recognition.

PubMed

Ronzon-Gonzalez, Eliane; Hernandez-Castillo, Carlos R; Pasaye, Erick H; Vaca-Palomares, Israel; Fernandez-Ruiz, Juan

2017-11-22

Identifying faces is a process central for social interaction and a relevant factor in eyewitness theory. False recognition is a critical mistake during an eyewitness's identification scenario because it can lead to a wrongful conviction. Previous studies have described neural areas related to false facial recognition using the standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, triggering related false recognition. Nonetheless, misidentification of faces without trying to elicit false memories (unrelated false recognition) in a police lineup could involve different cognitive processes, and distinct neural areas. To delve into the neural circuitry of unrelated false recognition, we evaluated the memory and response confidence of participants while watching faces photographs in an fMRI task. Functional activations of unrelated false recognition were identified by contrasting the activation on this condition vs. the activations related to recognition (hits) and correct rejections. The results identified the right precentral and cingulate gyri as areas with distinctive activations during false recognition events suggesting a conflict resulting in a dysfunction during memory retrieval. High confidence suggested that about 50% of misidentifications may be related to an unconscious process. These findings add to our understanding of the construction of facial memories and its biological basis, and the fallibility of the eyewitness testimony.

Witnesses' memory for events and faces under elevated levels of intoxication.

PubMed

Altman, Christopher M; Schreiber Compo, Nadja; McQuiston, Dawn; Hagsand, Angelica V; Cervera, Jiselle

2018-08-01

Research on alcohol and witness memory has burgeoned over the last decade. However, most studies have tested participants at relatively low breath alcohol concentration (BAC) levels, unrepresentative of those encountered by officers in the field. To examine how higher intoxication levels might impair witness memory for events and faces, the current research tested participants' ability to recall a mock crime at elevated BAC levels (>.08%). The BAC levels of bar patrons (N = 138) were recorded before witnessing a video-taped mock crime. Participants were then interviewed using free recall and cued questions and shown a six-person target-present or target-absent lineup. Results show that alcohol negatively affected both the quantity and quality of recall. Regardless of question format, alcohol also reduced the percentage of accurate information elicited from witnesses; however, only cued questions increased the percentage of inaccurate information reported. Intoxication had no effect on identification accuracy. These findings suggest that the encoding and storage systems for faces and events may be impacted differently by alcohol. Our results also highlight the importance of including higher BAC levels when examining the effects of alcohol on witness memory.

Learning facts during aging: the benefits of curiosity.

PubMed

Galli, Giulia; Sirota, Miroslav; Gruber, Matthias J; Ivanof, Bianca Elena; Ganesh, Janani; Materassi, Maurizio; Thorpe, Alistair; Loaiza, Vanessa; Cappelletti, Marinella; Craik, Fergus I M

2018-05-22

Background/study context: Recent studies have shown that young adults better remember factual information they are curious about. It is not entirely clear, however, whether this effect is retained during aging. Here, the authors investigated curiosity-driven memory benefits in young and elderly individuals. In two experiments, young (age range 18-26) and older (age range 65-89) adults read trivia questions and rated their curiosity to find out the answer. They also attended to task-irrelevant faces presented between the trivia question and the answer. The authors then administered a surprise memory test to assess recall accuracy for trivia answers and recognition memory performance for the incidentally learned faces. In both young and elderly adults, recall performance was higher for answers to questions that elicited high levels of curiosity. In Experiment 1, the authors also found that faces presented in temporal proximity to curiosity-eliciting trivia questions were better recognized, indicating that the beneficial effects of curiosity extended to the encoding of task-irrelevant material. These findings show that elderly individuals benefit from the memory-enhancing effects of curiosity. This may lead to the implementation of learning strategies that target and stimulate curiosity in aging.

Selective memory retrieval in social groups: When silence is golden and when it is not.

PubMed

Abel, Magdalena; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T

2015-07-01

Previous research has shown that the selective remembering of a speaker and the resulting silences can cause forgetting of related, but unmentioned information by a listener (Cuc, Koppel, & Hirst, 2007). Guided by more recent work that demonstrated both detrimental and beneficial effects of selective memory retrieval in individuals, the present research explored the effects of selective remembering in social groups when access to the encoding context at retrieval was maintained or impaired. In each of three experiments, selective retrieval by the speaker impaired recall of the listener when access to the encoding context was maintained, but it improved recall of the listener when context access was impaired. The results suggest the existence of two faces of selective memory retrieval in social groups, with a detrimental face when the encoding context is still active at retrieval and a beneficial face when it is not. The role of silence in social recall thus seems to be more complex than was indicated in prior work, and mnemonic silences on the part of a speaker can be "golden" for the memories of a listener under some circumstances, but not be "golden" under others. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Recovering faces from memory: the distracting influence of external facial features.

PubMed

Frowd, Charlie D; Skelton, Faye; Atherton, Chris; Pitchford, Melanie; Hepton, Gemma; Holden, Laura; McIntyre, Alex H; Hancock, Peter J B

2012-06-01

Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.

Perceptual expertise in forensic facial image comparison

PubMed Central

White, David; Phillips, P. Jonathon; Hahn, Carina A.; Hill, Matthew; O'Toole, Alice J.

2015-01-01

Forensic facial identification examiners are required to match the identity of faces in images that vary substantially, owing to changes in viewing conditions and in a person's appearance. These identifications affect the course and outcome of criminal investigations and convictions. Despite calls for research on sources of human error in forensic examination, existing scientific knowledge of face matching accuracy is based, almost exclusively, on people without formal training. Here, we administered three challenging face matching tests to a group of forensic examiners with many years' experience of comparing face images for law enforcement and government agencies. Examiners outperformed untrained participants and computer algorithms, thereby providing the first evidence that these examiners are experts at this task. Notably, computationally fusing responses of multiple experts produced near-perfect performance. Results also revealed qualitative differences between expert and non-expert performance. First, examiners' superiority was greatest at longer exposure durations, suggestive of more entailed comparison in forensic examiners. Second, experts were less impaired by image inversion than non-expert students, contrasting with face memory studies that show larger face inversion effects in high performers. We conclude that expertise in matching identity across unfamiliar face images is supported by processes that differ qualitatively from those supporting memory for individual faces. PMID:26336174

CANTAB object recognition and language tests to detect aging cognitive decline: an exploratory comparative study

PubMed Central

Cabral Soares, Fernanda; de Oliveira, Thaís Cristina Galdino; de Macedo, Liliane Dias e Dias; Tomás, Alessandra Mendonça; Picanço-Diniz, Domingos Luiz Wanderley; Bento-Torres, João; Bento-Torres, Natáli Valim Oliver; Picanço-Diniz, Cristovam Wanderley

2015-01-01

Objective The recognition of the limits between normal and pathological aging is essential to start preventive actions. The aim of this paper is to compare the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) and language tests to distinguish subtle differences in cognitive performances in two different age groups, namely young adults and elderly cognitively normal subjects. Method We selected 29 young adults (29.9±1.06 years) and 31 older adults (74.1±1.15 years) matched by educational level (years of schooling). All subjects underwent a general assessment and a battery of neuropsychological tests, including the Mini Mental State Examination, visuospatial learning, and memory tasks from CANTAB and language tests. Cluster and discriminant analysis were applied to all neuropsychological test results to distinguish possible subgroups inside each age group. Results Significant differences in the performance of aged and young adults were detected in both language and visuospatial memory tests. Intragroup cluster and discriminant analysis revealed that CANTAB, as compared to language tests, was able to detect subtle but significant differences between the subjects. Conclusion Based on these findings, we concluded that, as compared to language tests, large-scale application of automated visuospatial tests to assess learning and memory might increase our ability to discern the limits between normal and pathological aging. PMID:25565785

Perceptual and memorial contributions to developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Ulrich, Philip I N; Wilkinson, David T; Ferguson, Heather J; Smith, Laura J; Bindemann, Markus; Johnston, Robert A; Schmalzl, Laura

2017-02-01

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly associated with the failure to properly perceive individuating facial properties, notably those conveying configural or holistic content. While this may indicate that the primary impairment is perceptual, it is conceivable that some cases of DP are instead caused by a memory impairment, with any perceptual complaint merely allied rather than causal. To investigate this possibility, we administered a battery of face perception tasks to 11 individuals who reported that their face recognition difficulties disrupt daily activity and who also performed poorly on two formal tests of face recognition. Group statistics identified, relative to age- and gender-matched controls, difficulties in apprehending global-local relations and the holistic properties of faces, and in matching across viewpoints, but these were mild in nature and were not consistently evident at the level of individual participants. Six of the 11 individuals failed to show any evidence of perceptual impairment. In the remaining five individuals, no single perceptual deficit, or combination of deficits, was necessary or sufficient for poor recognition performance. These data suggest that some cases of DP are better explained by a memorial rather than perceptual deficit, and highlight the relevance of the apperceptive/associative distinction more commonly applied to the allied syndrome of acquired prosopagnosia.

Orienting Attention in Visual Working Memory Reduces Interference from Memory Probes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Makovski, Tal; Sussman, Rachel; Jiang, Yuhong V.

2008-01-01

Given a changing visual environment, and the limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM), the contents of VWM must be in constant flux. Using a change detection task, the authors show that VWM is subject to obligatory updating in the face of new information. Change detection performance is enhanced when the item that may change is…

Face classification using electronic synapses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yao, Peng; Wu, Huaqiang; Gao, Bin; Eryilmaz, Sukru Burc; Huang, Xueyao; Zhang, Wenqiang; Zhang, Qingtian; Deng, Ning; Shi, Luping; Wong, H.-S. Philip; Qian, He

2017-05-01

Conventional hardware platforms consume huge amount of energy for cognitive learning due to the data movement between the processor and the off-chip memory. Brain-inspired device technologies using analogue weight storage allow to complete cognitive tasks more efficiently. Here we present an analogue non-volatile resistive memory (an electronic synapse) with foundry friendly materials. The device shows bidirectional continuous weight modulation behaviour. Grey-scale face classification is experimentally demonstrated using an integrated 1024-cell array with parallel online training. The energy consumption within the analogue synapses for each iteration is 1,000 × (20 ×) lower compared to an implementation using Intel Xeon Phi processor with off-chip memory (with hypothetical on-chip digital resistive random access memory). The accuracy on test sets is close to the result using a central processing unit. These experimental results consolidate the feasibility of analogue synaptic array and pave the way toward building an energy efficient and large-scale neuromorphic system.

Face classification using electronic synapses.

PubMed

Yao, Peng; Wu, Huaqiang; Gao, Bin; Eryilmaz, Sukru Burc; Huang, Xueyao; Zhang, Wenqiang; Zhang, Qingtian; Deng, Ning; Shi, Luping; Wong, H-S Philip; Qian, He

2017-05-12

Conventional hardware platforms consume huge amount of energy for cognitive learning due to the data movement between the processor and the off-chip memory. Brain-inspired device technologies using analogue weight storage allow to complete cognitive tasks more efficiently. Here we present an analogue non-volatile resistive memory (an electronic synapse) with foundry friendly materials. The device shows bidirectional continuous weight modulation behaviour. Grey-scale face classification is experimentally demonstrated using an integrated 1024-cell array with parallel online training. The energy consumption within the analogue synapses for each iteration is 1,000 × (20 ×) lower compared to an implementation using Intel Xeon Phi processor with off-chip memory (with hypothetical on-chip digital resistive random access memory). The accuracy on test sets is close to the result using a central processing unit. These experimental results consolidate the feasibility of analogue synaptic array and pave the way toward building an energy efficient and large-scale neuromorphic system.

The Effects of Similarity on High-Level Visual Working Memory Processing.

PubMed

Yang, Li; Mo, Lei

2017-01-01

Similarity has been observed to have opposite effects on visual working memory (VWM) for complex images. How can these discrepant results be reconciled? To answer this question, we used a change-detection paradigm to test visual working memory performance for multiple real-world objects. We found that working memory for moderate similarity items was worse than that for either high or low similarity items. This pattern was unaffected by manipulations of stimulus type (faces vs. scenes), encoding duration (limited vs. self-paced), and presentation format (simultaneous vs. sequential). We also found that the similarity effects differed in strength in different categories (scenes vs. faces). These results suggest that complex real-world objects are represented using a centre-surround inhibition organization . These results support the category-specific cortical resource theory and further suggest that centre-surround inhibition organization may differ by category.

Thinking in Black and White: Conscious thought increases racially biased judgments through biased face memory.

PubMed

Strick, Madelijn; Stoeckart, Peter F; Dijksterhuis, Ap

2015-11-01

It is a common research finding that conscious thought helps people to avoid racial discrimination. These three experiments, however, illustrate that conscious thought may increase biased face memory, which leads to increased judgment bias (i.e., preferring White to Black individuals). In Experiments 1 and 2, university students formed impressions of Black and White housemate candidates. They judged the candidates either immediately (immediate decision condition), thought about their judgments for a few minutes (conscious thought condition), or performed an unrelated task for a few minutes (unconscious thought condition). Conscious thinkers and immediate decision-makers showed a stronger face memory bias than unconscious thinkers, and this mediated increased judgment bias, although not all results were significant. Experiment 3 used a new, different paradigm and showed that a Black male was remembered as darker after a period of conscious thought than after a period of unconscious thought. Implications for racial prejudice are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Association of enhanced limbic response to threat with decreased cortical facial recognition memory response in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Satterthwaite, Theodore D; Wolf, Daniel H; Loughead, James; Ruparel, Kosha; Valdez, Jeffrey N; Siegel, Steven J; Kohler, Christian G; Gur, Raquel E; Gur, Ruben C

2010-04-01

Recognition memory of faces is impaired in patients with schizophrenia, as is the neural processing of threat-related signals, but how these deficits interact to produce symptoms is unclear. The authors used an affective face recognition paradigm to examine possible interactions between cognitive and affective neural systems in schizophrenia. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent response was examined by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (3 Tesla) in healthy comparison subjects (N=21) and in patients with schizophrenia (N=12) or schizoaffective disorder, depressed type (N=4), during a two-choice recognition task that used images of human faces. Each target face, previously displayed with a threatening or nonthreatening affect, was displayed with neutral affect. Responses to successful recognition and responses to the effect of previously threatening versus nonthreatening affect were evaluated, and correlations with symptom severity (total Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale score) were examined. Functional connectivity analyses examined the relationship between activation in the amygdala and cortical regions involved in recognition memory. Patients performed the task more slowly than healthy comparison subjects. Comparison subjects recruited the expected cortical regions to a greater degree than patients, and patients with more severe symptoms demonstrated proportionally less recruitment. Increased symptoms were also correlated with augmented amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex response to threatening faces. Comparison subjects exhibited a negative correlation between activity in the amygdala and cortical regions involved in cognition, while patients showed weakening of this relationship. Increased symptoms were related to an enhanced threat response in limbic regions and a diminished recognition memory response in cortical regions, supporting a link between these two brain systems that are often examined in isolation. This finding suggests that abnormal processing of threat-related signals in the environment may exacerbate cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.

Medial temporal lobe contributions to short-term memory for faces.

PubMed

Race, Elizabeth; LaRocque, Karen F; Keane, Margaret M; Verfaellie, Mieke

2013-11-01

The role of the medial temporal lobes (MTL) in short-term memory (STM) remains a matter of debate. Whereas imaging studies commonly show hippocampal activation during short-delay memory tasks, evidence from amnesic patients with MTL lesions is mixed. It has been argued that apparent STM impairments in amnesia may reflect long-term memory (LTM) contributions to performance. We challenge this conclusion by demonstrating that MTL amnesic patients show impaired delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) for faces in a task that meets both a traditional delay-based and a recently proposed distractor-based criterion for classification as an STM task. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that our face DMS task meets the proposed distractor-based criterion for STM classification, in that extensive processing of delay-period distractor stimuli disrupts performance of healthy individuals. In Experiment 2, MTL amnesic patients with lesions extending into anterior subhippocampal cortex, but not patients with lesions limited to the hippocampus, show impaired performance on this task without distraction at delays as short as 8 s, within temporal range of delay-based STM classification, in the context of intact perceptual matching performance. Experiment 3 provides support for the hypothesis that STM for faces relies on configural processing by showing that the extent to which healthy participants' performance is disrupted by interference depends on the configural demands of the distractor task. Together, these findings are consistent with the notion that the amnesic impairment in STM for faces reflects a deficit in configural processing associated with subhippocampal cortices and provide novel evidence that the MTL supports cognition beyond the LTM domain. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Hippocampal activations in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis- an observational study on intramural encoding-delayed recall paradigms using task-based memory fMRI.

PubMed

Rajesh, P G; Thomas, Bejoy; Pammi, V S Chandrasekhar; Kesavadas, C; Alexander, Aley; Radhakrishnan, Ashalatha; Thomas, S V; Menon, R N

2018-05-26

To validate concurrent utility of within-scanner encoding and delayed recognition-memory paradigms to ascertain hippocampal activations during task-based memory fMRI. Memory paradigms were designed for faces, word-pairs and abstract designs. A deep-encoding task was designed comprising of a total of 9 cycles run within a 1.5T MRI scanner. A recall session was performed after 1 h within the scanner using an event-related design. Group analysis was done with 'correct-incorrect' responses applied as parametric modulators in Statistical Parametric Mapping version 8 using boot-strap method to enable estimation of laterality indices (LI) using custom anatomical masks involving the medio-basal temporal structures. Twenty seven subjects with drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE-HS) [17 patients of left-MTLE and 10 patients of right-MTLE] and 21 right handed age-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited. For the encoding paradigm blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses in HC demonstrated right laterality for faces, left laterality for word pairs, and bilaterality for design encoding over the regions of interest. Both right and left MTLE-HS groups revealed left lateralisation for word-pair encoding, bilateral activation for face encoding, with design encoding in right MTLE-HS demonstrating a left shift. As opposed to lateralization shown in controls, group analysis of cued-recall BOLD signals acquired within scanner in left MTLE-HS demonstrated right lateralization for word-pairs with bilaterality for faces and designs. The right MTLE-HS group demonstrated bilateral activations for faces, word-pairs and designs. Recall-based fMRI paradigms indicate hippocampal plasticity in MTLE-HS, maximal for word-pair associate recall tasks. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The ties to unbind: age-related differences in feature (un)binding in working memory for emotional faces

PubMed Central

Pehlivanoglu, Didem; Jain, Shivangi; Ariel, Robert; Verhaeghen, Paul

2014-01-01

In the present study, we investigated age-related differences in the processing of emotional stimuli. Specifically, we were interested in whether older adults would show deficits in unbinding emotional expression (i.e., either no emotion, happiness, anger, or disgust) from bound stimuli (i.e., photographs of faces expressing these emotions), as a hyper-binding account of age-related differences in working memory would predict. Younger and older adults completed different N-Back tasks (side-by-side 0-Back, 1-Back, 2-Back) under three conditions: match/mismatch judgments based on either the identity of the face (identity condition), the face’s emotional expression (expression condition), or both identity and expression of the face (both condition). The two age groups performed more slowly and with lower accuracy in the expression condition than in the both condition, indicating the presence of an unbinding process. This unbinding effect was more pronounced in older adults than in younger adults, but only in the 2-Back task. Thus, older adults seemed to have a specific deficit in unbinding in working memory. Additionally, no age-related differences were found in accuracy in the 0-Back task, but such differences emerged in the 1-Back task, and were further magnified in the 2-Back task, indicating independent age-related differences in attention/STM and working memory. Pupil dilation data confirmed that the attention/STM version of the task (1-Back) is more effortful for older adults than younger adults. PMID:24795660

Face processing among twins with and without autism: social correlates and twin concordance.

PubMed

Neuhaus, Emily; Kresse, Anna; Faja, Susan; Bernier, Raphael A; Webb, Sara Jane

2016-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has a strong heritable basis, as evidenced by twin concordance rates. Within ASD, symptom domains may arise via independent genetic contributions, with varying heritabilities and genetic mechanisms. In this article, we explore social functioning in the form of (i) electrophysiological and behavioral measures of face processing (P1 and N170) and (ii) social behavior among child and adolescent twins with (N = 52) and without ASD (N = 66). Twins without ASD had better holistic face processing and face memory, faster P1 responses and greater sensitivity to the effects of facial inversion on P1. In contrast, N170 responses to faces were similar across diagnosis, with more negative amplitudes for faces vs non-face images. Across the sample, stronger social skills and fewer social difficulties were associated with faster P1 and N170 responses to upright faces, and better face memory. Twins were highly correlated within pairs across most measures, but correlations were significantly stronger for monozygotic vs dizygotic pairs on N170 latency and social problems. We suggest common developmental influences across twins for face processing and social behavior, but highlight (i) neural speed of face processing and (ii) social difficulties as important avenues in the search for genetic underpinnings in ASD. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Holistic processing, contact, and the other-race effect in face recognition.

PubMed

Zhao, Mintao; Hayward, William G; Bülthoff, Isabelle

2014-12-01

Face recognition, holistic processing, and processing of configural and featural facial information are known to be influenced by face race, with better performance for own- than other-race faces. However, whether these various other-race effects (OREs) arise from the same underlying mechanisms or from different processes remains unclear. The present study addressed this question by measuring the OREs in a set of face recognition tasks, and testing whether these OREs are correlated with each other. Participants performed different tasks probing (1) face recognition, (2) holistic processing, (3) processing of configural information, and (4) processing of featural information for both own- and other-race faces. Their contact with other-race people was also assessed with a questionnaire. The results show significant OREs in tasks testing face memory and processing of configural information, but not in tasks testing either holistic processing or processing of featural information. Importantly, there was no cross-task correlation between any of the measured OREs. Moreover, the level of other-race contact predicted only the OREs obtained in tasks testing face memory and processing of configural information. These results indicate that these various cross-race differences originate from different aspects of face processing, in contrary to the view that the ORE in face recognition is due to cross-race differences in terms of holistic processing. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Deep and shallow encoding effects on face recognition: an ERP study.

PubMed

Marzi, Tessa; Viggiano, Maria Pia

2010-12-01

Event related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate whether and when brain activity related to face recognition varies according to the processing level undertaken at encoding. Recognition was assessed when preceded by a "shallow" (orientation judgement) or by a "deep" study task (occupation judgement). Moreover, we included a further manipulation by presenting at encoding faces either in the upright or inverted orientation. As expected, deeply encoded faces were recognized more accurately and more quickly with respect to shallowly encoded faces. The ERP showed three main findings: i) as witnessed by more positive-going potentials for deeply encoded faces, at early and later processing stage, face recognition was influenced by the processing strategy adopted during encoding; ii) structural encoding, indexed by the N170, turned out to be "cognitively penetrable" showing repetition priming effects for deeply encoded faces; iii) face inversion, by disrupting configural processing during encoding, influenced memory related processes for deeply encoded faces and impaired the recognition of faces shallowly processed. The present study adds weight to the concept that the depth of processing during memory encoding affects retrieval. We found that successful retrieval following deep encoding involved both familiarity- and recollection-related processes showing from 500 ms a fronto-parietal distribution, whereas shallow encoding affected only earlier processing stages reflecting perceptual priming. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in anxiety predict neural measures of visual working memory for untrustworthy faces.

PubMed

Meconi, Federica; Luria, Roy; Sessa, Paola

2014-12-01

When facing strangers, one of the first evaluations people perform is to implicitly assess their trustworthiness. However, the underlying processes supporting trustworthiness appraisal are poorly understood. We hypothesized that visual working memory (VWM) maintains online face representations that are sensitive to physical cues of trustworthiness, and that differences among individuals in representing untrustworthy faces are associated with individual differences in anxiety. Participants performed a change detection task that required encoding and maintaining for a short interval the identity of one face parametrically manipulated to be either trustworthy or untrustworthy. The sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN), an event-related component (ERP) time-locked to the onset of the face, was used to index the resolution of face representations in VWM. Results revealed greater SPCN amplitudes for trustworthy faces when compared with untrustworthy faces, indicating that VWM is sensitive to physical cues of trustworthiness, even in the absence of explicit trustworthiness appraisal. In addition, differences in SPCN amplitude between trustworthy and untrustworthy faces correlated with participants' anxiety, indicating that healthy college students with sub-clinical high anxiety levels represented untrustworthy faces in greater detail compared with students with sub-clinical low anxiety levels. This pattern of findings is discussed in terms of the high flexibility of aversive/avoidance and appetitive/approach motivational systems. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Fluid intelligence and executive functioning more alike than different?

PubMed

van Aken, Loes; Kessels, Roy P C; Wingbermühle, Ellen; van der Veld, William M; Egger, Jos I M

2016-02-01

Fluid intelligence (Gf) has been related to executive functioning (EF) in previous studies, and it is also known to be correlated with crystallized intelligence (Gc). The present study includes representative measures of Gf, Gc, and EF frequently used in clinical practice to examine this Gf-EF relation. It is hypothesised that the Gf-EF relation is higher than the Gc-EF relation, and that working memory in particular (as a measure of EF) shows a high contribution to this relation. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on a mixed neuropsychiatric and non-clinical sample consisting of 188 participants, using the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test, and three executive tasks of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, covering working memory, planning skills, and set shifting. The model fitted the data well [χ²(24)=35.25, p=0.07, RMSEA=0.050]. A very high correlation between Gf and EF was found (0.91), with working memory being the most profound indicator. A moderate to high correlation between Gc and EF was present. Current results are consistent with findings of a strong relation between Gf and working memory. Gf and EF are highly correlated. Gf dysfunction in neuropsychiatric patients warrants further EF examination and vice versa. It is discussed that results confirm the need to distinguish between specific versus general fluid/executive functioning, the latter being more involved when task complexity and novelty increase. This distinction can provide a more refined differential diagnosis and improve neuropsychiatric treatment indication.

How Negative Social Bias Affects Memory for Faces: An Electrical Neuroimaging Study

PubMed Central

Proverbio, Alice Mado; La Mastra, Francesca; Zani, Alberto

2016-01-01

During social interactions, we make inferences about people’s personal characteristics based on their appearance. These inferences form a potential prejudice that can positively or negatively bias our interaction with them. Not much is known about the effects of negative bias on face perception and the ability to recognize people faces. This ability was investigated by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from 128 sites in 16 volunteers. In the first session (encoding), they viewed 200 faces associated with a short fictional story that described anecdotal positive or negative characteristics about each person. In the second session (recognition), they underwent an old/new memory test, in which they had to distinguish 100 new faces from the previously shown faces. ERP data relative to the encoding phase showed a larger anterior negativity in response to negatively (vs. positively) biased faces, indicating an additional processing of faces with unpleasant social traits. In the recognition task, ERPs recorded in response to new faces elicited a larger FN400 than to old faces, and to positive than negative faces. Additionally, old faces elicited a larger Old-New parietal response than new faces, in the form of an enlarged late positive (LPC) component. An inverse solution SwLORETA (450–550 ms) indicated that remembering old faces was associated with the activation of right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left medial temporal gyrus, and right fusiform gyrus. Only negatively connoted faces strongly activated the limbic and parahippocampal areas and the left SFG. A dissociation was found between familiarity (modulated by negative bias) and recollection (distinguishing old from new faces). PMID:27655327

Systematic Distortions in Vertical Placement of Features in Drawings of Faces and Houses

PubMed Central

Jones, Julia; Davies, Simon J.

2017-01-01

A crucial part of accurately drawing portraits is the correct vertical positioning of the eyes. Non-experts typically place the eyes higher on the head than they are actually located; however, the explanation for this remains unclear. In Experiment 1, participants drew faces from memory and directly copied from a photograph, to confirm whether biases in observational drawings were related to biases in memory-based drawings. In Experiment 2, participants drew a cat’s face, to test explanations by Carbon and Wirth for the positional bias: the ‘view-from-below, the ‘head-as-box’, and the ‘hair-as-hat’ explanations. Results indicated that none of these three explanations could fully account for the vertical positioning biases observed in drawings of the cat’s face. The findings are discussed in relation to the idea that distortions of vertical alignment in drawings may be related to the position of the most salient features within a face or object. PMID:28210488

Do you remember your sad face? The roles of negative cognitive style and sad mood.

PubMed

Caudek, Corrado; Monni, Alessandra

2013-01-01

We studied the effects of negative cognitive style, sad mood, and facial affect on the self-face advantage in a sample of 66 healthy individuals (mean age 26.5 years, range 19-47 years). The sample was subdivided into four groups according to inferential style and responsivity to sad mood induction. Following a sad mood induction, we examined the effect on working memory of an incidental association between facial affect, facial identity, and head-pose orientation. Overall, head-pose recognition was more accurate for the self-face than for nonself face (self-face advantage, SFA). However, participants high in negative cognitive style who experienced higher levels of sadness displayed a stronger SFA for sad expressions than happy expressions. The remaining participants displayed an opposite bias (a stronger SFA for happy expressions than sad expressions), or no bias. These findings highlight the importance of trait-vulnerability status in the working memory biases related to emotional facial expressions.

Application of OpenCV in Asus Tinker Board for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Wei-Yu; Wu, Frank; Hu, Chung-Chiang

2017-06-01

The rise of the Internet of Things to promote the development of technology development board, the processor speed of operation and memory capacity increases, more and more applications, can already be completed before the data on the board computing, combined with the network to sort the information after Sent to the cloud for processing, so that the front of the development board is no longer simply retrieve the data device. This study uses Asus Tinker Board to install OpenCV for real-time face recognition and capture of the face, the acquired face to the Microsoft Cognitive Service cloud database for artificial intelligence comparison, to find out what the face now represents the mood. The face of the corresponding person name, and finally, and then through the text of Speech to read the name of the name to complete the identification of the action. This study was developed using the Asus Tinker Board, which uses ARM-based CPUs with high efficiency and low power consumption, plus improvements in memory and hardware performance for the development board.

Coordinated clinical and financial analysis as a powerful tool to influence vendor pricing.

PubMed

Logan, Catherine A; Wu, Roger Y; Mulley, Debra; Smith, Paul C; Schwaitzberg, Steven D

2010-01-01

As costs continue to outpace reimbursements, hospital administrators and clinicians face increasing pressure to justify new capital purchases. Massachusetts Health Care Reform has added further economic challenges for Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH), as resources formerly available to treat the uninsured have been redirected. In this challenging climate, many hospitals still lack a standardized process for technology planning and/or vendor negotiation. : The purpose of this study was to determine whether a simple, coordinated clinical and financial analysis of a technology, Endoscopic Carpal Tunnel Release (ECTR), is sufficient to impact vendor pricing at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a disproportionate share hospital (DSH) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This case study addressed the topic of technology adoption, a complex decision-making process every hospital administration faces. Taking note of other hospitals approaches to instill a strategic management culture, CHA combined a literature review on clinical outcomes and financial analysis on profitability. Clinical effectiveness was evaluated through a literature review. The financial analysis was based on a retrospective inquiry of fixed and variable costs, reimbursement rates, actual payer mix, and profitability of adopting ECTR over open carpal tunnel release at CHA. This clinical and financial analysis was then shared with the vendor. A literature review revealed that although there are short-term benefits to ECTR, there is little to no difference in long-term outcomes to justify a calculated incremental loss of $91.49 in revenue per case. Sharing this analysis with the vendor resulted in a 30% price reduction. A revised cost analysis demonstrated a $53.51 incremental gain in revenue per case. CHA has since elected to offer ECTR to its patients. Smaller hospital systems often have modest leverage in vendor negotiations. Our results suggest that the development of adoption criteria and an evidence-based managerial approach can create dialogue with vendors and directly impact pricing. Coordinated clinical and financial analysis is a powerful tool, enabling administrators, clinicians, and medical device suppliers to work constructively to provide patients access to innovative technology, even in the face of a challenging payer mix. Ongoing assessment of clinical outcomes and financial data must be performed to reflect the most up-to-date scientific and economic climate.

Mental Schemas Hamper Memory Storage of Goal-Irrelevant Information

PubMed Central

Sweegers, C. C. G.; Coleman, G. A.; van Poppel, E. A. M.; Cox, R.; Talamini, L. M.

2015-01-01

Mental schemas exert top-down control on information processing, for instance by facilitating the storage of schema-related information. However, given capacity-limits and competition in neural network processing, schemas may additionally exert their effects by suppressing information with low momentary relevance. In particular, when existing schemas suffice to guide goal-directed behavior, this may actually reduce encoding of the redundant sensory input, in favor of gaining efficiency in task performance. The present experiment set out to test this schema-induced shallow encoding hypothesis. Our approach involved a memory task in which faces had to be coupled to homes. For half of the faces the responses could be guided by a pre-learned schema, for the other half of the faces such a schema was not available. Memory storage was compared between schema-congruent and schema-incongruent items. To characterize putative schema effects, memory was assessed both with regard to visual details and contextual aspects of each item. The depth of encoding was also assessed through an objective neural measure: the parietal old/new ERP effect. This ERP effect, observed between 500–800 ms post-stimulus onset, is thought to reflect the extent of recollection: the retrieval of a vivid memory, including various contextual details from the learning episode. We found that schema-congruency induced substantial impairments in item memory and even larger ones in context memory. Furthermore, the parietal old/new ERP effect indicated higher recollection for the schema-incongruent than the schema-congruent memories. The combined findings indicate that, when goals can be achieved using existing schemas, this can hinder the in-depth processing of novel input, impairing the formation of perceptually detailed and contextually rich memory traces. Taking into account both current and previous findings, we suggest that schemas can both positively and negatively bias the processing of sensory input. An important determinant in this matter is likely related to momentary goals, such that mental schemas facilitate memory processing of goal-relevant input, but suppress processing of goal-irrelevant information. Highlights – Schema-congruent information suffers from shallow encoding. – Schema congruency induces poor item and context memory. – The parietal old/new effect is less pronounced for schema-congruent items. – Schemas exert different influences on memory formation depending on current goals. PMID:26635582

Examining the influence of a spatially irrelevant working memory load on attentional allocation.

PubMed

McDonnell, Gerald P; Dodd, Michael D

2013-08-01

The present study examined the influence of holding task-relevant gaze cues in working memory during a target detection task. Gaze cues shift attention in gaze-consistent directions, even when they are irrelevant to a primary detection task. It is unclear, however, whether gaze cues need to be perceived online to elicit these effects, or how these effects may be moderated if the gaze cues are relevant to a secondary task. In Experiment 1, participants encoded a face for a subsequent memory task, after which they performed an unrelated target detection task. Critically, gaze direction was irrelevant to the target detection task, but memory for the perceived face was tested at trial conclusion. Surprisingly, participants exhibited inhibition-of-return (IOR) and not facilitation, with slower response times for the gazed-at location. In Experiments 2, presentation duration and cue-target stimulus-onset asynchrony were manipulated and we continued to observe IOR with no early facilitation. Experiment 3 revealed facilitation but not IOR when the memory task was removed; Experiment 4 also revealed facilitation when the gaze cue memory task was replaced with arrows cues. The present experiments provide an important dissociation between perceiving cues online versus holding them in memory as it relates to attentional allocation. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Aging, culture, and memory for categorically processed information.

PubMed

Yang, Lixia; Chen, Wenfeng; Ng, Andy H; Fu, Xiaolan

2013-11-01

Literature on cross-cultural differences in cognition suggests that categorization, as an information processing and organization strategy, was more often used by Westerners than by East Asians, particularly for older adults. This study examines East-West cultural differences in memory for categorically processed items and sources in young and older Canadians and native Chinese with a conceptual source memory task (Experiment 1) and a reality monitoring task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants encoded photographic faces of their own ethnicity that were artificially categorized into GOOD or EVIL characters and then completed a source memory task in which they identified faces as old-GOOD, old-EVIL, or new. In Experiment 2, participants viewed a series of words, each followed either by a corresponding image (i.e., SEEN) or by a blank square within which they imagined an image for the word (i.e., IMAGINED). At test, they decided whether the test words were old-SEEN, old-IMAGINED, or new. In general, Canadians outperformed Chinese in memory for categorically processed information, an effect more pronounced for older than for young adults. Extensive exercise of culturally preferred categorization strategy differentially benefits Canadians and reduces their age group differences in memory for categorically processed information.

Collaborative memory in a serial combination procedure.

PubMed

Ditta, Annie Stanfield; Steyvers, Mark

2013-01-01

This article describes a new approach for studying collaborative memory that examines people's editing processes for naturally occurring memory errors. In this approach, memories of individuals are combined via a chaining method in which each participant indirectly receives information from the previous participant. Participants were asked to individually study word lists and recall as many words as possible in an online setting. Once a participant completed the recall task, his/her answers were provided for the next participant as suggested answers for their own recall. However, that participant was allowed to add or subtract words from the provided list of suggested answers. The final answer of the group was an aggregate of recalled words based on the answer given by the last participant in the chain. Results showed that participants displayed a very high accuracy of recall throughout the chain, although they were not able to replicate the entire study list or eliminate all errors by the end of the chain. This procedure has the advantage that it allows examination of the memory-editing processes individuals utilise when they communicate information indirectly, independent from social factors that arise in face-to-face group memory settings.

Facial Mimicry and Emotion Consistency: Influences of Memory and Context.

PubMed

Kirkham, Alexander J; Hayes, Amy E; Pawling, Ralph; Tipper, Steven P

2015-01-01

This study investigates whether mimicry of facial emotions is a stable response or can instead be modulated and influenced by memory of the context in which the emotion was initially observed, and therefore the meaning of the expression. The study manipulated emotion consistency implicitly, where a face expressing smiles or frowns was irrelevant and to be ignored while participants categorised target scenes. Some face identities always expressed emotions consistent with the scene (e.g., smiling with a positive scene), whilst others were always inconsistent (e.g., frowning with a positive scene). During this implicit learning of face identity and emotion consistency there was evidence for encoding of face-scene emotion consistency, with slower RTs, a reduction in trust, and inhibited facial EMG for faces expressing incompatible emotions. However, in a later task where the faces were subsequently viewed expressing emotions with no additional context, there was no evidence for retrieval of prior emotion consistency, as mimicry of emotion was similar for consistent and inconsistent individuals. We conclude that facial mimicry can be influenced by current emotion context, but there is little evidence of learning, as subsequent mimicry of emotionally consistent and inconsistent faces is similar.

Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: Support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory

PubMed Central

Drane, Daniel L.; Ojemann, Jeffrey G.; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W.; Gross, Robert E.; Hebb, Adam O.; Silbergeld, Daniel L.; Miller, John W.; Voets, Natalie L.; Saindane, Amit M.; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J.; Ojemann, George A.; Tranel, Daniel

2012-01-01

This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre-and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory and a distributed representation of concepts. PMID:23040175

Famous face identification in temporal lobe epilepsy: support for a multimodal integration model of semantic memory.

PubMed

Drane, Daniel L; Ojemann, Jeffrey G; Phatak, Vaishali; Loring, David W; Gross, Robert E; Hebb, Adam O; Silbergeld, Daniel L; Miller, John W; Voets, Natalie L; Saindane, Amit M; Barsalou, Lawrence; Meador, Kimford J; Ojemann, George A; Tranel, Daniel

2013-06-01

This study aims to demonstrate that the left and right anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) perform critical but unique roles in famous face identification, with damage to either leading to differing deficit patterns reflecting decreased access to lexical or semantic concepts but not their degradation. Famous face identification was studied in 22 presurgical and 14 postsurgical temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and 20 healthy comparison subjects using free recall and multiple choice (MC) paradigms. Right TLE patients exhibited presurgical deficits in famous face recognition, and postsurgical deficits in both famous face recognition and familiarity judgments. However, they did not exhibit any problems with naming before or after surgery. In contrast, left TLE patients demonstrated both pre- and postsurgical deficits in famous face naming but no significant deficits in recognition or familiarity. Double dissociations in performance between groups were alleviated by altering task demands. Postsurgical right TLE patients provided with MC options correctly identified greater than 70% of famous faces they initially rated as unfamiliar. Left TLE patients accurately chose the name for nearly all famous faces they recognized (based on their verbal description) but initially failed to name, although they tended to rapidly lose access to this name. We believe alterations in task demands activate alternative routes to semantic and lexical networks, demonstrating that unique pathways to such stored information exist, and suggesting a different role for each ATL in identifying visually presented famous faces. The right ATL appears to play a fundamental role in accessing semantic information from a visual route, with the left ATL serving to link semantic information to the language system to produce a specific name. These findings challenge several assumptions underlying amodal models of semantic memory, and provide support for the integrated multimodal theories of semantic memory and a distributed representation of concepts. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An examination of relationship between neurological soft signs and neurocognition.

PubMed

Solanki, Ram Kumar; Swami, Mukesh Kumar; Singh, Paramjeet

2012-03-01

Neurological soft signs (NSS) and cognitive function had been examined in schizophrenia, but their relationship has remained elusive for several years. We examined the relationship between NSS and cognitive functions in the present study. A cross sectional study was carried out. Subjects were drawn from first degree relatives of schizophrenia patients, admitted as inpatient or attending as an outpatient. Controls were recruited by word of mouth from hospital staff and visitors of hospitalized patients. Those subjects who satisfied the screening process were subjected to Cambridge Neurological Inventory for soft sign assessment and digit span test, paired associate learning test (PALT) and visuo-spatial working memory matrix (VSWMM) for cognitive function assessment. Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for analysis. Significant negative correlation of primitive reflexes with PALT; of motor coordination with VSWMM, working memory (WM) and cognitive index; of total NSS with WM and cognitive index among first degree relatives. SEM showed that motor soft signs have important negative influence over WM. The current findings indicate that NSS have significant negative effect on cognitive functioning. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Beyond the FFA: The Role of the Ventral Anterior Temporal Lobes in Face Processing

PubMed Central

Collins, Jessica A.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2014-01-01

Extensive research has supported the existence of a specialized face-processing network that is distinct from the visual processing areas used for general object recognition. The majority of this work has been aimed at characterizing the response properties of the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA), which together are thought to constitute the core network of brain areas responsible for facial identification. Although accruing evidence has shown that face-selective patches in the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATLs) are interconnected with the FFA and OFA, and that they play a role in facial identification, the relative contribution of these brain areas to the core face-processing network has remained unarticulated. Here we review recent research critically implicating the vATLs in face perception and memory. We propose that current models of face processing should be revised such that the ventral anterior temporal lobes serve a centralized role in the visual face-processing network. We speculate that a hierarchically organized system of face processing areas extends bilaterally from the inferior occipital gyri to the vATLs, with facial representations becoming increasingly complex and abstracted from low-level perceptual features as they move forward along this network. The anterior temporal face areas may serve as the apex of this hierarchy, instantiating the final stages of face recognition. We further argue that the anterior temporal face areas are ideally suited to serve as an interface between face perception and face memory, linking perceptual representations of individual identity with person-specific semantic knowledge. PMID:24937188

INTERIOR VIEW OF BUILDING 593 FACING WEST. U.S. Naval ...

Library of Congress Historic Buildings Survey, Historic Engineering Record, Historic Landscapes Survey

INTERIOR VIEW OF BUILDING 593 FACING WEST. - U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, Retail Warehouse, Fleet Landing Halawa, near Kamehameha Highway between Richardson Recreation Center & USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center, Pearl City, Honolulu County, HI

Content-specific activational effects of estrogen on working memory performance.

PubMed

Vranić, Andrea; Hromatko, Ivana

2008-07-01

The authors explored the influence of task content and the menstrual cycle phase on working memory (WM) performance. They addressed the content specificity of WM in the framework of evolutionary psychology, proposing a hormone-mediated adaptive design governing face perception. The authors tested 2 groups of healthy young women (n = 66 women with regular menstrual cycle, n = 27 oral contraceptive users) on a WM task with adult male or infant face photographs. Analyses of variance showed significant interaction between task content and estrogen level. Women were more efficient in solving the male faces task during high-estrogen phase of the cycle than during low-estrogen phase. No differences were found in the efficacy of solving the infant faces task between different phases of the cycle. Results suggest content-specific activational effects of estrogen on the WM performance and are consistent with the notion of a hormonal mechanism underlying adaptive shifts in cognition related to mating motivation.

I undervalue you but I need you: the dissociation of attitude and memory toward in-group members.

PubMed

Zhao, Ke; Wu, Qi; Shen, Xunbing; Xuan, Yuming; Fu, Xiaolan

2012-01-01

In the present study, the in-group bias or in-group derogation among Mainland Chinese was investigated through a rating task and a recognition test. In two experiments,participants from two universities with similar ranks rated novel faces or names and then had a recognition test. Half of the faces or names were labeled as participants' own university and the other half were labeled as their counterpart. Results showed that, for either faces or names, rating scores for out-group members were consistently higher than those for in-group members, whereas the recognition accuracy showed just the opposite. These results indicated that the attitude and memory for group-relevant information might be dissociated among Mainland Chinese.