Event-related brain potentials that distinguish false memory for events that occurred only seconds in the past.

PubMed

Chen, Hong; Voss, Joel L; Guo, Chunyan

2012-07-30

False memory often involves retrieving events from the distant past that did not actually happen. However, recent evidence obtained using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm for eliciting false memory experiences suggests that individuals can falsely believe that events occurred mere seconds in the past when they in fact did not. Subjects in these experiments endorsed unstudied critical lure words as having been studied, despite the fact that word lists were studied just moments before. We identified event-related brain potential (ERP) correlates of this experience, and included a repetition priming manipulation to better assess the functional significance of these ERPs. Behavioral and ERP data were collected from 21 Capital Normal University students using a short-term DRM task. Two categories of effects were identified that distinguished true from false short-term memory: (1) early semantic priming effects from 300 to 500 ms and (2) later retrieval and retrieval-monitoring effects after 500 ms. The repetition priming manipulation had distinct influences on these effects, consistent with their differential associations with semantic priming versus episodic retrieval. Characterization of ERPs related to semantic priming and episodic retrieval provides important information regarding the mechanisms of short-term false memory. In contrast, most studies examining false memory in standard long-delay DRM paradigms identify ERP effects related only to retrieval monitoring. These findings highlight the neural processing involved in illusions of memory after very brief delays and highlight the role of semantic processing in short-term false memory.

Event-related brain potentials that distinguish false memory for events that occurred only seconds in the past

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background False memory often involves retrieving events from the distant past that did not actually happen. However, recent evidence obtained using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm for eliciting false memory experiences suggests that individuals can falsely believe that events occurred mere seconds in the past when they in fact did not. Subjects in these experiments endorsed unstudied critical lure words as having been studied, despite the fact that word lists were studied just moments before. We identified event-related brain potential (ERP) correlates of this experience, and included a repetition priming manipulation to better assess the functional significance of these ERPs. Methods Behavioral and ERP data were collected from 21 Capital Normal University students using a short-term DRM task. Results Two categories of effects were identified that distinguished true from false short-term memory: (1) early semantic priming effects from 300 to 500 ms and (2) later retrieval and retrieval-monitoring effects after 500 ms. The repetition priming manipulation had distinct influences on these effects, consistent with their differential associations with semantic priming versus episodic retrieval. Conclusion Characterization of ERPs related to semantic priming and episodic retrieval provides important information regarding the mechanisms of short-term false memory. In contrast, most studies examining false memory in standard long-delay DRM paradigms identify ERP effects related only to retrieval monitoring. These findings highlight the neural processing involved in illusions of memory after very brief delays and highlight the role of semantic processing in short-term false memory. PMID:22846189

When does word meaning affect immediate serial recall in semantic dementia?

PubMed

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Jones, Roy; Bateman, David; Ralph, Matthew A Lambon

2004-03-01

Patients with semantic dementia can show superior immediate recall of words that they still understand relatively well, as compared with more semantically degraded words, suggesting that conceptual knowledge makes a major contribution to phonological short-term memory. However, a number of studies have failed to show such a recall difference, challenging this view. We examined the effect of several methodological factors on the recall of known and degraded words in 4 patients with semantic dementia, in order to investigate possible reasons for this discrepancy. In general, our patients did exhibit poorer recall of the degraded words and made more phonological errors on these items. In addition, set size affected the magnitude of the recall advantage for known words. This finding suggests that semantic degradation influenced the rate of learning in the immediate recall task when the same items were presented repeatedly. The methods used to select known and degraded items also impacted on the recall difference. List length, however, did not affect the advantage for known words. The coherence of items in phonological short-term memory was affected by their semantic status, but not by the length of the material to be retained. The implications of these findings for the role of semantic and phonological representations in verbal short-term memory are discussed.

The short- and long-term consequences of directed forgetting in a working memory task.

PubMed

Festini, Sara B; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A

2013-01-01

Directed forgetting requires the voluntary control of memory. Whereas many studies have examined directed forgetting in long-term memory (LTM), the mechanisms and effects of directed forgetting within working memory (WM) are less well understood. The current study tests how directed forgetting instructions delivered in a WM task influence veridical memory, as well as false memory, over the short and long term. In a modified item recognition task Experiment 1 tested WM only and demonstrated that directed forgetting reduces false recognition errors and semantic interference. Experiment 2 replicated these WM effects and used a surprise LTM recognition test to assess the long-term effects of directed forgetting in WM. Long-term veridical memory for to-be-remembered lists was better than memory for to-be-forgotten lists-the directed forgetting effect. Moreover, fewer false memories emerged for to-be-forgotten information than for to-be-remembered information in LTM as well. These results indicate that directed forgetting during WM reduces semantic processing of to-be-forgotten lists over the short and long term. Implications for theories of false memory and the mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory are discussed.

Iconic Memory and Reading Performance in Nine-Year-Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riding, R. J.; Pugh, J. C.

1977-01-01

The reading process incorporates three factors: images registered in visual sensory memory, semantic analysis in short-term memory, and long-term memory storage. The focus here is on the contribution of sensory memory to reading performance. (Author/RK)

Automatic semantic encoding in verbal short-term memory: evidence from the concreteness effect.

PubMed

Campoy, Guillermo; Castellà, Judit; Provencio, Violeta; Hitch, Graham J; Baddeley, Alan D

2015-01-01

The concreteness effect in verbal short-term memory (STM) tasks is assumed to be a consequence of semantic encoding in STM, with immediate recall of concrete words benefiting from richer semantic representations. We used the concreteness effect to test the hypothesis that semantic encoding in standard verbal STM tasks is a consequence of controlled, attention-demanding mechanisms of strategic semantic retrieval and encoding. Experiment 1 analysed the effect of presentation rate, with slow presentations being assumed to benefit strategic, time-dependent semantic encoding. Experiments 2 and 3 provided a more direct test of the strategic hypothesis by introducing three different concurrent attention-demanding tasks. Although Experiment 1 showed a larger concreteness effect with slow presentations, the following two experiments yielded strong evidence against the strategic hypothesis. Limiting available attention resources by concurrent tasks reduced global memory performance, but the concreteness effect was equivalent to that found in control conditions. We conclude that semantic effects in STM result from automatic semantic encoding and provide tentative explanations for the interaction between the concreteness effect and the presentation rate.

The effect of concurrent semantic categorization on delayed serial recall.

PubMed

Acheson, Daniel J; MacDonald, Maryellen C; Postle, Bradley R

2011-01-01

The influence of semantic processing on the serial ordering of items in short-term memory was explored using a novel dual-task paradigm. Participants engaged in 2 picture-judgment tasks while simultaneously performing delayed serial recall. List material varied in the presence of phonological overlap (Experiments 1 and 2) and in semantic content (concrete words in Experiment 1 and 3; nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3). Picture judgments varied in the extent to which they required accessing visual semantic information (i.e., semantic categorization and line orientation judgments). Results showed that, relative to line-orientation judgments, engaging in semantic categorization judgments increased the proportion of item-ordering errors for concrete lists but did not affect error proportions for nonword lists. Furthermore, although more ordering errors were observed for phonologically similar relative to dissimilar lists, no interactions were observed between the phonological overlap and picture-judgment task manipulations. These results demonstrate that lexical-semantic representations can affect the serial ordering of items in short-term memory. Furthermore, the dual-task paradigm provides a new method for examining when and how semantic representations affect memory performance.

The Effect of Concurrent Semantic Categorization on Delayed Serial Recall

PubMed Central

Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Postle, Bradley R.

2010-01-01

The influence of semantic processing on the serial ordering of items in short-term memory was explored using a novel dual-task paradigm. Subjects engaged in two picture judgment tasks while simultaneously performing delayed serial recall. List material varied in the presence of phonological overlap (Experiments 1 and 2) and in semantic content (concrete words in Experiment 1 and 3; nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3). Picture judgments varied in the extent to which they required accessing visual semantic information (i.e., semantic categorization and line orientation judgments). Results showed that, relative to line orientation judgments, engaging in semantic categorization judgments increased the proportion of item ordering errors for concrete lists but did not affect error proportions for nonword lists. Furthermore, although more ordering errors were observed for phonologically similar relative to dissimilar lists, no interactions were observed between the phonological overlap and picture judgment task manipulations. These results thus demonstrate that lexical-semantic representations can affect the serial ordering of items in short-term memory. Furthermore, the dual-task paradigm provides a new method for examining when and how semantic representations affect memory performance. PMID:21058880

[Picture naming and memory in children: phonological and semantic effects].

PubMed

Scheuer, Claudia Ines; Stivanin, Luciene; Mangilli, Laura Davidson

2004-01-01

[corrected] The relation between picture naming and the short and long term memories. to verify the ability of picture naming based on phonological and semantic queues, relating it to memory. 80 pictures selected from a set of 400 (Cycowicz et al., 1997) were presented to 80 children with ages ranging from 3 to 6 years. Responses were classified in semantic and phonologic errors and number of correct answers. The effect of the articulatory complexity was significant and the effect of the semantic complexity was not significant. Naming is the result of memory activation which is organized in categories, physical properties and function; phonologic effects do interfere in the activity of naming, whereas the semantic effects reflect that the long term memory is organized in categories which are dependant of the context and of the development.

Functional segregation of the inferior frontal gyrus for syntactic processes: a functional magnetic-resonance imaging study.

PubMed

Uchiyama, Yuji; Toyoda, Hiroshi; Honda, Manabu; Yoshida, Haruyo; Kochiyama, Takanori; Ebe, Kazutoshi; Sadato, Norihiro

2008-07-01

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging in 18 normal volunteers to determine whether there is separate representation of syntactic, semantic, and verbal working memory processing in the left inferior frontal gyrus (GFi). We compared a sentence comprehension task with a short-term memory maintenance task to identify syntactic and semantic processing regions. To investigate the effects of syntactic and verbal working memory load while minimizing the differences in semantic processes, we used comprehension tasks with garden-path (GP) sentences, which require re-parsing, and non-garden-path (NGP) sentences. Compared with the short-term memory task, sentence comprehension activated the left GFi, including Brodmann areas (BAs) 44, 45, and 47, and the left superior temporal gyrus. In GP versus NGP sentences, there was greater activity in the left BAs 44, 45, and 46 extending to the left anterior insula, the pre-supplementary motor area, and the right cerebellum. In the left GFi, verbal working memory activity was located more dorsally (BA 44/45), semantic processing was located more ventrally (BA 47), and syntactic processing was located in between (BA 45). These findings indicate a close relationship between semantic and syntactic processes, and suggest that BA 45 might link verbal working memory and semantic processing via syntactic unification processes.

False memories and lexical decision: even twelve primes do not cause long-term semantic priming.

PubMed

Zeelenberg, René; Pecher, Diane

2002-03-01

Semantic priming effects are usually obtained only if the prime is presented shortly before the target stimulus. Recent evidence obtained with the so-called false memory paradigm suggests, however, that in both explicit and implicit memory tasks semantic relations between words can result in long-lasting effects when multiple 'primes' are presented. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether these effects would generalize to lexical decision. In four experiments we showed that even as many as 12 primes do not cause long-term semantic priming. In all experiments, however, a repetition priming effect was obtained. The present results are consistent with a number of other results showing that semantic information plays a minimal role in long-term priming in visual word recognition.

Cognition and the Brain

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-05-25

by a by the distinctions between short-term and long-term sensory event. As evidence they shom that %khen the ISI memory ’. episodic , semantic and...Patterson. J.V. and Starr. A. I 19S9a) ams .1 function of variations in semantic citaceori,’itions. In: D. Brain potentials in a memory scanning task. 1...number) FIELD GROUP SUB-GROUP L ocalization of cognitive processes; alpha-band suppression; memory scanning for tones; silent speech; visual image

Semantic Memory Is Key to Binding Phonology: Converging Evidence from Immediate Serial Recall in Semantic Dementia and Healthy Participants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Paul; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Ehsan, Sheeba; Jones, Roy W.; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2009-01-01

Patients with semantic dementia (SD) make numerous phoneme migration errors when recalling lists of words they no longer fully understand, suggesting that word meaning makes a critical contribution to phoneme binding in verbal short-term memory. Healthy individuals make errors that appear similar when recalling lists of nonwords, which also lack…

Keeping it together: Semantic coherence stabilizes phonological sequences in short-term memory.

PubMed

Savill, Nicola; Ellis, Rachel; Brooke, Emma; Koa, Tiffany; Ferguson, Suzie; Rojas-Rodriguez, Elena; Arnold, Dominic; Smallwood, Jonathan; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2018-04-01

Our ability to hold a sequence of speech sounds in mind, in the correct configuration, supports many aspects of communication, but the contribution of conceptual information to this basic phonological capacity remains controversial. Previous research has shown modest and inconsistent benefits of meaning on phonological stability in short-term memory, but these studies were based on sets of unrelated words. Using a novel design, we examined the immediate recall of sentence-like sequences with coherent meaning, alongside both standard word lists and mixed lists containing words and nonwords. We found, and replicated, substantial effects of coherent meaning on phoneme-level accuracy: The phonemes of both words and nonwords within conceptually coherent sequences were more likely to be produced together and in the correct order. Since nonwords do not exist as items in long-term memory, the semantic enhancement of phoneme-level recall for both item types cannot be explained by a lexically based item reconstruction process employed at the point of retrieval ("redintegration"). Instead, our data show, for naturalistic input, that when meaning emerges from the combination of words, the phonological traces that support language are reinforced by a semantic-binding process that has been largely overlooked by past short-term memory research.

Impaired Semantic Knowledge Underlies the Reduced Verbal Short-Term Storage Capacity in Alzheimer's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peters, Frederic; Majerus, Steve; De Baerdemaeker, Julie; Salmon, Eric; Collette, Fabienne

2009-01-01

A decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity is consistently observed in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although this impairment has been mainly attributed to attentional deficits during encoding and maintenance, the progressive deterioration of semantic knowledge in early stages of AD may also be an important determinant of poor…

The role of semantic memory in short-term recall: effect of strategic retrieval ability in an elderly population.

PubMed

Larigauderie, Pascale; Michaud, Aurelie; Vicente, Siobhan

2011-03-01

The present paper examines the relationship between two classic phenomena: semantic effects in short-term recall (STR) tasks, which are interpreted as indicating the involvement of long-term memory (LTM) in the functioning of short-term memory, on the one hand, and the existence of individual differences amongst elderly people in strategic retrieval ability (i.e., the ability to activate representations in LTM in a controlled way) on the other hand. Forty elderly participants completed a STR task under four different conditions which were thought to differentially involve LTM representations. Several executive functions, among which the strategic retrieval ability, were evaluated. The results showed that the participants who obtained the best performances in terms of strategic retrieval ability, and only in this executive ability, also exhibited better performances in the STR task, in particular when this task was performed under conditions which favored the use of LTM.

What factors underlie children's susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories? investigating the roles of language skills and auditory short-term memory.

PubMed

McGeown, Sarah P; Gray, Eleanor A; Robinson, Jamey L; Dewhurst, Stephen A

2014-06-01

Two experiments investigated the cognitive skills that underlie children's susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, performance on the Verbal Similarities subtest of the British Ability Scales (BAS) II (Elliott, Smith, & McCulloch, 1997) predicted correct and false recall of semantic lures. In Experiment 2, performance on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp, 1988) did not predict correct recall, but inversely predicted the false recall of phonological lures. Auditory short-term memory was a negative predictor of false recall in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. The findings are discussed in terms of the formation of gist and verbatim traces as proposed by fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1998) and the increasing automaticity of associations as proposed by associative activation theory (Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009). Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Attention, Imagery and Memory: A Neuromagnetic Investigation

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-10-14

The full complexity of memory processes suggested by the distinctions between short-term and long-term memory , episodic , semantic and declarative...the ;canning of short-term memory . This fol- lows from the fact that bilateral damage to medial temporal cortex results in anterograde amnesia , which...Neural Science AD-A243 859 r󈧅 FINAL TECHNICAL REPORTC Attention, Imagery and Memory 1 March 1988 -30 September 1991 , Q6’i iQ’ UA Dr.~~~~C A..Fel

Episodic and semantic memory in children with mesial temporal sclerosis.

PubMed

Rzezak, Patricia; Guimarães, Catarina; Fuentes, Daniel; Guerreiro, Marilisa M; Valente, Kette Dualibi Ramos

2011-07-01

The aim of this study was to analyze semantic and episodic memory deficits in children with mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) and their correlation with clinical epilepsy variables. For this purpose, 19 consecutive children and adolescents with MTS (8 to 16 years old) were evaluated and their performance on five episodic memory tests (short- and long-term memory and learning) and four semantic memory tests was compared with that of 28 healthy volunteers. Patients performed worse on tests of immediate and delayed verbal episodic memory, visual episodic memory, verbal and visual learning, mental scanning for semantic clues, object naming, word definition, and repetition of sentences. Clinical variables such as early age at seizure onset, severity of epilepsy, and polytherapy impaired distinct types of memory. These data confirm that children with MTS have episodic memory deficits and add new information on semantic memory. The data also demonstrate that clinical variables contribute differently to episodic and semantic memory performance. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in children's memory and reading comprehension: an investigation of semantic and inhibitory deficits.

PubMed

Cain, Kate

2006-07-01

Three experiments compared the verbal memory skills of children with poor reading comprehension with that of same-age good comprehenders. The aims were to determine if semantic and/or inhibitory deficits explained comprehenders' problems on measures of verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory. In Experiment 1 there were no group differences on word- and number-based measures of short-term storage and no evidence that semantic knowledge mediated word recall. In Experiment 2 poor comprehenders were impaired on word- and number-based assessments of working memory, the greatest deficit found on the word-based task. Error analysis of both word-based tasks revealed that poor comprehenders were more likely to recall items that should have been inhibited than were good comprehenders. Experiment 3 extended this finding: Poor comprehenders were less able to inhibit information that was no longer relevant. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in inhibitory processing influence the ability to regulate the contents of working memory, which may contribute to the differential memory performance of good and poor comprehenders.

The relationship between semantic short-term memory and immediate serial recall of known and unknown words and nonwords: data from two Chinese individuals with aphasia.

PubMed

Wong, Winsy; Low, Sam-Po

2008-07-01

The present study investigated verbal recall of semantically preserved and degraded words and nonwords by taking into consideration the status of one's semantic short-term memory (STM). Two experiments were conducted on 2 Chinese individuals with aphasia. The first experiment showed that they had largely preserved phonological processing abilities accompanied by mild but comparable semantic processing deficits; however, their performance on STM tasks revealed a double dissociation. The second experiment found that the participant with more preserved semantic STM had better recall of known words and nonwords than of their unknown counterparts, whereas such effects were absent in the patient with severe semantic STM deficit. The results are compatible with models that assume separate phonological and semantic STM components, such as that of R. C. Martin, M. Lesch, and M. Bartha (1999). In addition, the distribution of error types was different from previous studies. This is discussed in terms of the methodology of the authors' experiments and current views regarding the nature of semantic STM and representations in the Chinese mental lexicon. (c) 2008 APA

Explaining semantic short-term memory deficits: Evidence for the critical role of semantic control

PubMed Central

Hoffman, Paul; Jefferies, Elizabeth; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A.

2011-01-01

Patients with apparently selective short-term memory (STM) deficits for semantic information have played an important role in developing multi-store theories of STM and challenge the idea that verbal STM is supported by maintaining activation in the language system. We propose that semantic STM deficits are not as selective as previously thought and can occur as a result of mild disruption to semantic control processes, i.e., mechanisms that bias semantic processing towards task-relevant aspects of knowledge and away from irrelevant information. We tested three semantic STM patients with tasks that tapped four aspects of semantic control: (i) resolving ambiguity between word meanings, (ii) sensitivity to cues, (iii) ignoring irrelevant information and (iv) detecting weak semantic associations. All were impaired in conditions requiring more semantic control, irrespective of the STM demands of the task, suggesting a mild, but task-general, deficit in regulating semantic knowledge. This mild deficit has a disproportionate effect on STM tasks because they have high intrinsic control demands: in STM tasks, control is required to keep information active when it is no longer available in the environment and to manage competition between items held in memory simultaneously. By re-interpreting the core deficit in semantic STM patients in this way, we are able to explain their apparently selective impairment without the need for a specialised STM store. Instead, we argue that semantic STM patients occupy the mildest end of spectrum of semantic control disorders. PMID:21195105

Phonological, visual, and semantic coding strategies and children's short-term picture memory span.

PubMed

Henry, Lucy A; Messer, David; Luger-Klein, Scarlett; Crane, Laura

2012-01-01

Three experiments addressed controversies in the previous literature on the development of phonological and other forms of short-term memory coding in children, using assessments of picture memory span that ruled out potentially confounding effects of verbal input and output. Picture materials were varied in terms of phonological similarity, visual similarity, semantic similarity, and word length. Older children (6/8-year-olds), but not younger children (4/5-year-olds), demonstrated robust and consistent phonological similarity and word length effects, indicating that they were using phonological coding strategies. This confirmed findings initially reported by Conrad (1971), but subsequently questioned by other authors. However, in contrast to some previous research, little evidence was found for a distinct visual coding stage at 4 years, casting doubt on assumptions that this is a developmental stage that consistently precedes phonological coding. There was some evidence for a dual visual and phonological coding stage prior to exclusive use of phonological coding at around 5-6 years. Evidence for semantic similarity effects was limited, suggesting that semantic coding is not a key method by which young children recall lists of pictures.

A category-specific advantage for numbers in verbal short-term memory: evidence from semantic dementia.

PubMed

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Patterson, Karalyn; Jones, Roy W; Bateman, David; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2004-01-01

This study explored possible reasons for the striking difference between digit span and word span in patients with semantic dementia. Immediate serial recall (ISR) of number and non-number words was examined in four patients. For every case, the recall of single-digit numbers was normal whereas the recall of non-number words was impaired relative to controls. This difference extended to multi-digit numbers, and remained even when frequency, imageability, word length, set size and size of semantic category were matched for the numbers and words. The advantage for number words also applied to the patients' reading performance. Previous studies have suggested that semantic memory plays a critical role in verbal short-term memory (STM) and reading: patients with semantic dementia show superior recall and reading of words that are still relatively well known compared to previously known but now semantically degraded words. Additional assessments suggested that this semantic locus was the basis of the patients' category-specific advantage for numbers. Comprehension was considerably better for number than non-number words. Number knowledge may be relatively preserved in semantic dementia because the cortical atrophy underlying the condition typically spares the areas of the parietal lobes thought to be crucial in numerical cognition but involves the inferolateral temporal-lobes known to support general conceptual knowledge.

A Disorder of Executive Function and Its Role in Language Processing

PubMed Central

Martin, Randi C.; Allen, Corinne M.

2014-01-01

R. Martin and colleagues have proposed separate stores for the maintenance of phonological and semantic information in short-term memory. Evidence from patients with aphasia has shown that damage to these separable buffers has specific consequences for language comprehension and production, suggesting an interdependence between language and memory systems. This article discusses recent research on aphasic patients with limited-capacity short-term memories (STMs) and reviews evidence suggesting that deficits in retaining semantic information in STM may be caused by a disorder in the executive control process of inhibition, specific to verbal representations. In contrast, a phonological STM deficit may be due to overly rapid decay. In semantic STM deficits, it is hypothesized that the inhibitory deficit produces difficulty inhibiting irrelevant verbal representations, which may lead to excessive interference. In turn, the excessive interference associated with semantic STM deficits has implications for single-word and sentence processing, and it may be the source of the reduced STM capacity shown by these patients. PMID:18720317

Semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory: are pleasant words easier to remember than neutral words in serial recall and serial recognition?

PubMed

Monnier, Catherine; Syssau, Arielle

2008-01-01

In the four experiments reported here, we examined the role of word pleasantness on immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. In Experiment 1, we compared verbal serial recall of pleasant and neutral words, using a limited set of items. In Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1 with an open set of words (i.e., new items were used on every trial). In Experiments 3 and 4, we assessed immediate serial recognition of pleasant and neutral words, using item sets from Experiments 1 and 2. Pleasantness was found to have a facilitation effect on both immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. This study supplies some new supporting arguments in favor of a semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory performance. The pleasantness effect observed in immediate serial recognition showed that, contrary to a number of earlier findings, performance on this task can also turn out to be dependent on semantic factors. The results are discussed in relation to nonlinguistic and psycholinguistic models of short-term memory.

Proactive interference in a semantic short-term memory deficit: role of semantic and phonological relatedness.

PubMed

Hamilton, A Cris; Martin, Randi C

2007-01-01

Previous research has indicated that patients with semantic short-term memory (STM) deficits demonstrate unusual intrusions of previously presented material during serial recall tasks (Martin and Lesch, 1996). These intrusions suggest excessive proactive interference (PI) from previous lists. Here, we explore one such patient's susceptibility to PI. Experiment 1 demonstrated patient M.L.'s extreme susceptibility to PI using a probe recognition task that manipulates the recency of negative probes (the recent negatives task). When stimuli consisted of letters, M.L. showed greatly exaggerated effects of PI, well outside of the range of healthy control participants. Experiment 2 used a variation of the recent negatives task to examine the relative contribution of semantic and phonological relatedness in PI. This task manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness of probes and recently presented list items. Relative to healthy control participants, patient M.L. showed exaggerated interference effects for both phonological and semantically related probes, both for probes related to the current list and for probes related to the previous list. These data have important implications for theories of semantic STM deficits. Specifically, these data suggest that it is not the rapid decay of semantic representations that is responsible for difficulties in short-term recall, but rather the abnormal persistence of previously presented material. We propose that this susceptibility to PI is the result of a deficit in control processes acting on STM.

Short-Term Memory and Aphasia: From Theory to Treatment.

PubMed

Minkina, Irene; Rosenberg, Samantha; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Martin, Nadine

2017-02-01

This article reviews existing research on the interactions between verbal short-term memory and language processing impairments in aphasia. Theoretical models of short-term memory are reviewed, starting with a model assuming a separation between short-term memory and language, and progressing to models that view verbal short-term memory as a cognitive requirement of language processing. The review highlights a verbal short-term memory model derived from an interactive activation model of word retrieval. This model holds that verbal short-term memory encompasses the temporary activation of linguistic knowledge (e.g., semantic, lexical, and phonological features) during language production and comprehension tasks. Empirical evidence supporting this model, which views short-term memory in the context of the processes it subserves, is outlined. Studies that use a classic measure of verbal short-term memory (i.e., number of words/digits correctly recalled in immediate serial recall) as well as those that use more intricate measures (e.g., serial position effects in immediate serial recall) are discussed. Treatment research that uses verbal short-term memory tasks in an attempt to improve language processing is then summarized, with a particular focus on word retrieval. A discussion of the limitations of current research and possible future directions concludes the review. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Short-Term Memory and Aphasia: From Theory to Treatment

PubMed Central

Minkina, Irene; Rosenberg, Samantha; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Martin, Nadine

2018-01-01

This article reviews existing research on the interactions between verbal short-term memory and language processing impairments in aphasia. Theoretical models of short-term memory are reviewed, starting with a model assuming a separation between short-term memory and language, and progressing to models that view verbal short-term memory as a cognitive requirement of language processing. The review highlights a verbal short-term memory model derived from an interactive activation model of word retrieval. This model holds that verbal short-term memory encompasses the temporary activation of linguistic knowledge (e.g., semantic, lexical, and phonological features) during language production and comprehension tasks. Empirical evidence supporting this model, which views short-term memory in the context of the processes it subserves, is outlined. Studies that use a classic measure of verbal short-term memory (i.e., number of words/digits correctly recalled in immediate serial recall) as well as those that use more intricate measures (e.g., serial position effects in immediate serial recall) are discussed. Treatment research that uses verbal short-term memory tasks in an attempt to improve language processing is then summarized, with a particular focus on word retrieval. A discussion of the limitations of current research and possible future directions concludes the review. PMID:28201834

False Memories Seconds Later: The Rapid and Compelling Onset of Illusory Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flegal, Kristin E.; Atkins, Alexandra S.; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A.

2010-01-01

Distortions of long-term memory (LTM) in the converging associates task are thought to arise from semantic associative processes and monitoring failures due to degraded verbatim and/or contextual memory. Sensory-based coding is traditionally considered more prevalent than meaning-based coding in short-term memory (STM), whereas the converse is…

Hearing loss is negatively related to episodic and semantic long-term memory but not to short-term memory.

PubMed

Rönnberg, Jerker; Danielsson, Henrik; Rudner, Mary; Arlinger, Stig; Sternäng, Ola; Wahlin, Ake; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

2011-04-01

To test the relationship between degree of hearing loss and different memory systems in hearing aid users. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to study the relationship between auditory and visual acuity and different cognitive and memory functions in an age-hetereogenous subsample of 160 hearing aid users without dementia, drawn from the Swedish prospective cohort aging study known as Betula (L.-G. Nilsson et al., 1997). Hearing loss was selectively and negatively related to episodic and semantic long-term memory (LTM) but not short-term memory (STM) performance. This held true for both ears, even when age was accounted for. Visual acuity alone, or in combination with auditory acuity, did not contribute to any acceptable SEM solution. The overall relationships between hearing loss and memory systems were predicted by the ease of language understanding model (J. Rönnberg, 2003), but the exact mechanisms of episodic memory decline in hearing aid users (i.e., mismatch/disuse, attentional resources, or information degradation) remain open for further experiments. The hearing aid industry should strive to design signal processing algorithms that are cognition friendly.

Morphological processing with deficient phonological short-term memory.

PubMed

Kavé, Gitit; Ze'ev, Hagit Bar; Lev, Anita

2007-07-01

This paper investigates the processing of Hebrew derivational morphology in an individual (S.E.) with deficient phonological short-term memory. In comparison to 10 age- and education-matched men, S.E. was impaired on digit span tasks and demonstrated no recency effect in word list recall. S.E. had low word retention span, but he exhibited phonological similarity and word length effects. His ability to make lexical decisions was intact. In a paired-associate test S.E. successfully learned semantically and morphologically related pairs but not phonologically related pairs, and his learning of nonwords was facilitated by the presence of Hebrew consonant roots. Semantic and morphological similarity enhanced immediate word recall. Results show that S.E. is capable of conducting morphological decomposition of Hebrew-derived words despite his phonological deficit, suggesting that transient maintenance of morphological constituents is independent of temporary storage and rehearsal of phonological codes, and that each is processed separately within short-term memory.

The Effect of Concurrent Semantic Categorization on Delayed Serial Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Acheson, Daniel J.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.; Postle, Bradley R.

2011-01-01

The influence of semantic processing on the serial ordering of items in short-term memory was explored using a novel dual-task paradigm. Participants engaged in 2 picture-judgment tasks while simultaneously performing delayed serial recall. List material varied in the presence of phonological overlap (Experiments 1 and 2) and in semantic content…

Hearing Loss Is Negatively Related to Episodic and Semantic Long-Term Memory but Not to Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ronnberg, Jerker; Danielsson, Henrik; Rudner, Mary; Arlinger, Stig; Sternang, Ola; Wahlin, Ake; Nilsson, Lars-Goran

2011-01-01

Purpose: To test the relationship between degree of hearing loss and different memory systems in hearing aid users. Method: Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to study the relationship between auditory and visual acuity and different cognitive and memory functions in an age-hetereogenous subsample of 160 hearing aid users without…

Impaired semantic knowledge underlies the reduced verbal short-term storage capacity in Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Peters, Frédéric; Majerus, Steve; De Baerdemaeker, Julie; Salmon, Eric; Collette, Fabienne

2009-12-01

A decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity is consistently observed in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although this impairment has been mainly attributed to attentional deficits during encoding and maintenance, the progressive deterioration of semantic knowledge in early stages of AD may also be an important determinant of poor STM performance. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of semantic knowledge on verbal short-term memory storage capacity in normal aging and in AD by exploring the impact of word imageability on STM performance. Sixteen patients suffering from mild AD, 16 healthy elderly subjects and 16 young subjects performed an immediate serial recall task using word lists containing high or low imageability words. All participant groups recalled more high imageability words than low imageability words, but the effect of word imageability on verbal STM was greater in AD patients than in both the young and the elderly control groups. More precisely, AD patients showed a marked decrease in STM performance when presented with lists of low imageability words, whereas recall of high imageability words was relatively well preserved. Furthermore, AD patients displayed an abnormal proportion of phonological errors in the low imageability condition. Overall, these results indicate that the support of semantic knowledge on STM performance was impaired for lists of low imageability words in AD patients. More generally, these findings suggest that the deterioration of semantic knowledge is partly responsible for the poor verbal short-term storage capacity observed in AD.

Short-term plasticity as a neural mechanism supporting memory and attentional functions.

PubMed

Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Ahveninen, Jyrki; Andermann, Mark L; Belliveau, John W; Raij, Tommi; Sams, Mikko

2011-11-08

Based on behavioral studies, several relatively distinct perceptual and cognitive functions have been defined in cognitive psychology such as sensory memory, short-term memory, and selective attention. Here, we review evidence suggesting that some of these functions may be supported by shared underlying neuronal mechanisms. Specifically, we present, based on an integrative review of the literature, a hypothetical model wherein short-term plasticity, in the form of transient center-excitatory and surround-inhibitory modulations, constitutes a generic processing principle that supports sensory memory, short-term memory, involuntary attention, selective attention, and perceptual learning. In our model, the size and complexity of receptive fields/level of abstraction of neural representations, as well as the length of temporal receptive windows, increases as one steps up the cortical hierarchy. Consequently, the type of input (bottom-up vs. top down) and the level of cortical hierarchy that the inputs target, determine whether short-term plasticity supports purely sensory vs. semantic short-term memory or attentional functions. Furthermore, we suggest that rather than discrete memory systems, there are continuums of memory representations from short-lived sensory ones to more abstract longer-duration representations, such as those tapped by behavioral studies of short-term memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Long-term consolidation of declarative memory: insight from temporal lobe epilepsy.

PubMed

Tramoni, Eve; Felician, Olivier; Barbeau, Emmanuel J; Guedj, Eric; Guye, Maxime; Bartolomei, Fabrice; Ceccaldi, Mathieu

2011-03-01

Several experiments carried out with a subset of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy have demonstrated normal memory performance at standard delays of recall (i.e. minutes to hours) but impaired performance over longer delays (i.e. days or weeks), suggesting altered long-term consolidation mechanisms. These mechanisms were specifically investigated in a group of five adult-onset pharmaco-sensitive patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, exhibiting severe episodic memory complaints despite normal performance at standardized memory assessment. In a first experiment, the magnitude of autobiographical memory loss was evaluated using retrograde personal memory tasks based on verbal and visual cues. In both conditions, results showed an unusual U-shaped pattern of personal memory impairment, encompassing most of the patients' life, sparing however, periods of the childhood, early adulthood and past several weeks. This profile was suggestive of a long-term consolidation impairment of personal episodes, adequately consolidated over 'short-term' delays but gradually forgotten thereafter. Therefore, in a subsequent experiment, patients were submitted to a protocol specifically devised to investigate short and long-term consolidation of contextually-bound experiences (episodic memory) and context-free information (semantic knowledge and single-items). In the short term (1 h), performance at both contextually-free and contextually-bound memory tasks was intact. After a 6-week delay, however, contextually-bound memory performance was impaired while contextually-free memory performance remained preserved. This effect was independent of task difficulty and the modality of retrieval (recall and recognition). Neuroimaging studies revealed the presence of mild metabolic changes within medial temporal lobe structures. Taken together, these results show the existence of different consolidation systems within declarative memory. They suggest that mild medial temporal lobe dysfunction can impede the building and stabilization of episodic memories but leaves long-term semantic and single-items mnemonic traces intact.

An Agent-Based Model for the Role of Short-Term Memory Enhancement in the Emergence of Grammatical Agreement.

PubMed

Vera, Javier

2018-01-01

What is the influence of short-term memory enhancement on the emergence of grammatical agreement systems in multi-agent language games? Agreement systems suppose that at least two words share some features with each other, such as gender, number, or case. Previous work, within the multi-agent language-game framework, has recently proposed models stressing the hypothesis that the emergence of a grammatical agreement system arises from the minimization of semantic ambiguity. On the other hand, neurobiological evidence argues for the hypothesis that language evolution has mainly related to an increasing of short-term memory capacity, which has allowed the online manipulation of words and meanings participating particularly in grammatical agreement systems. Here, the main aim is to propose a multi-agent language game for the emergence of a grammatical agreement system, under measurable long-range relations depending on the short-term memory capacity. Computer simulations, based on a parameter that measures the amount of short-term memory capacity, suggest that agreement marker systems arise in a population of agents equipped at least with a critical short-term memory capacity.

Semantic and phonological information in sentence recall: converging psycholinguistic and neuropsychological evidence.

PubMed

Schweppe, Judith; Rummer, Ralf; Bormann, Tobias; Martin, Randi C

2011-12-01

We present one experiment and a neuropsychological case study to investigate to what extent phonological and semantic representations contribute to short-term sentence recall. We modified Potter and Lombardi's (1990) intrusion paradigm, in which retention of a list interferes with sentence recall such that on the list a semantically related lure is presented, which is expected to intrude into sentence recall. In our version, lure words are either semantically related to target words in the sentence or semantically plus phonologically related. With healthy participants, intrusions are more frequent when lure and target overlap phonologically in addition to semantically than when they solely overlap semantically. When this paradigm is applied to a patient with a phonological short-term memory impairment, both lure types induce the same amount of intrusions. These findings indicate that usually phonological information is retained in sentence recall in addition to semantic information.

A case of amnesia at an early age.

PubMed

Brizzolara, Daniela; Casalini, Claudia; Montanaro, Domenico; Posteraro, Federico

2003-01-01

A dissociation between short- and long-term memory (LTM) and between the episodic and the semantic component of LTM is reported in a young girl who became amnesic at the age of 6 after an episode of acute encephalopathy resulting in bilateral frontal, insular, thalamic, ponto-mesencephalic, hippocampal and temporal lesions, as documented by MRI. The girl became amnesic a few months after starting school. A follow-up investigation showed that she was able to learn to read, write and acquire number facts and procedures and to improve her semantic knowledge. Our results show that the features of adult amnesia can also be found in children and that new semantic knowledge can be acquired in spite of an anterograde memory deficit. This dissociation does not agree with theories viewing long-term declarative memory as a unitary process mediated by the hippocampal system, but supports recent hypotheses that the acquisition of semantic knowledge is independent from episodic memory processes, and takes place through spared cortical regions subjacent to the hippocampi (Vargha-Khadem et al., 1997).

Reduced Short-Term Memory Span in Aphasia and Susceptibility to Interference: Contribution of Material-Specific Maintenance Deficits

PubMed Central

Barde, Laura H.F.; Schwartz, Myrna F.; Chrysikou, Evangelia G.; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L.

2010-01-01

Semantic short-term memory (STM) deficits have been traditionally defined as an inability to maintain semantic representations over a delay (R. Martin, Shelton & Yaffee, 1994). Yet some patients with semantic STM deficits make numerous intrusions of items from previously presented lists, thus presenting an interesting paradox: Why should an inability to maintain semantic representations produce an increase in intrusions from earlier lists? In this study, we investigated the relationship between maintenance deficits and susceptibility to interference in a group of 20 aphasic patients characterized with weak semantic or weak phonological STM. Patients and matched control participants performed a modified item-recognition task designed to elicit semantic or phonological interference from list items located one, two, or three trials back (Hamilton & R. Martin, 2007). Controls demonstrated significant effects of interference in both versions of the task. Interference in patients was predicted by the type and severity of their STM deficit; that is, shorter semantic spans were associated with greater semantic interference and shorter phonological spans were associated with greater phonological interference. We interpret these results through a new perspective, the reactivation hypothesis, and we discuss their importance for accounts emphasizing the contribution of maintenance mechanisms for STM impairments in aphasia as well as susceptibility to interference. PMID:19925813

Acquired amnesia in childhood: a single case study.

PubMed

Vicari, Stefano; Menghini, Deny; Di Paola, Margherita; Serra, Laura; Donfrancesco, Alberto; Fidani, Paola; Milano, Giuseppe Maria; Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto

2007-03-02

We report the case of C.L., an 8-year-old child who, following the surgical removal of an ependymoma from the left cerebral ventricle at the age of 4 years, developed significant difficulties in retaining day-to-day events and information. A thorough neuropsychological analysis documented in C.L. a severe anterograde amnesic syndrome, characterised by normal short-term memory, but poor performance on episodic long-term memory tests. In particular, C.L. demonstrated virtually no ability to recollect new verbal information several minutes after the presentation. As for semantic memory, C.L. demonstrated general semantic competencies, which, depending on the test, ranged from the level of a 6-year-old girl to a level corresponding to her actual chronological age. Finding a patient who, despite being severely impaired in the ability to recollect new episodic memories, still demonstrates at least partially preserved abilities to acquire new semantic knowledge suggests that neural circuits implicated in the memorisation of autobiographical events and factual information do not overlap completely. This case is examined in the light of growing literature concerned with the dissociation between episodic and semantic memory in childhood amnesia.

Get the gist? The effects of processing depth on false recognition in short-term and long-term memory.

PubMed

Flegal, Kristin E; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A

2014-07-01

Gist-based processing has been proposed to account for robust false memories in the converging-associates task. The deep-encoding processes known to enhance verbatim memory also strengthen gist memory and increase distortions of long-term memory (LTM). Recent research has demonstrated that compelling false memory illusions are relatively delay-invariant, also occurring under canonical short-term memory (STM) conditions. To investigate the contributions of gist to false memory at short and long delays, processing depth was manipulated as participants encoded lists of four semantically related words and were probed immediately, following a filled 3- to 4-s retention interval, or approximately 20 min later, in a surprise recognition test. In two experiments, the encoding manipulation dissociated STM and LTM on the frequency, but not the phenomenology, of false memory. Deep encoding at STM increases false recognition rates at LTM, but confidence ratings and remember/know judgments are similar across delays and do not differ as a function of processing depth. These results suggest that some shared and some unique processes underlie false memory illusions at short and long delays.

Lexical and Semantic Binding in Verbal Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Frankish, Clive R.; Ralph, Matthew A. Lambon

2006-01-01

Semantic dementia patients make numerous phoneme migration errors in their immediate serial recall of poorly comprehended words. In this study, similar errors were induced in the word recall of healthy participants by presenting unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. This technique revealed that lexicality, word frequency, imageability,…

Memory: Why You're Losing It, How to Save It.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Lee

1995-01-01

Describes the five types of memory: (1) semantic--what words and symbols mean; (2) implicit--how to do something such as ride a bike; (3) remote--data collected over the years; (4) working--short-term memory; and (5) episodic--recent experiences. Assesses the likelihood of each type's decaying over time. (JOW)

The Latent Structure of Memory: A Confirmatory Factor-Analytic Study of Memory Distinctions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herrman, Douglas J.; Schooler, Carmi; Caplan, Leslie J.; Lipman, Paula Darby; Grafman, Jordan; Schoenbach, Carrie; Schwab, Karen; Johnson, Marnie L.

2001-01-01

Used confirmatory factor analysis to study the nature of memory distinctions underlying the performance of two samples of Vietnam veterans. One sample (n=96) had received head injuries resulting in relatively small lesions; the other (n=85) had not. A four-component model with verbal-episodic, visual-episodic, semantic, and short-term memory…

Neural mechanisms underlying the facilitation of naming in aphasia using a semantic task: an fMRI study

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Previous attempts to investigate the effects of semantic tasks on picture naming in both healthy controls and people with aphasia have typically been confounded by inclusion of the phonological word form of the target item. As a result, it is difficult to isolate any facilitatory effects of a semantically-focused task to either lexical-semantic or phonological processing. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined the neurological mechanisms underlying short-term (within minutes) and long-term (within days) facilitation of naming from a semantic task that did not include the phonological word form, in both participants with aphasia and age-matched controls. Results Behavioral results showed that a semantic task that did not include the phonological word form can successfully facilitate subsequent picture naming in both healthy controls and individuals with aphasia. The whole brain neuroimaging results for control participants identified a repetition enhancement effect in the short-term, with modulation of activity found in regions that have not traditionally been associated with semantic processing, such as the right lingual gyrus (extending to the precuneus) and the left inferior occipital gyrus (extending to the fusiform gyrus). In contrast, the participants with aphasia showed significant differences in activation over both the short- and the long-term for facilitated items, predominantly within either left hemisphere regions linked to semantic processing or their right hemisphere homologues. Conclusions For control participants in this study, the short-lived facilitation effects of a prior semantic task that did not include the phonological word form were primarily driven by object priming and episodic memory mechanisms. However, facilitation effects appeared to engage a predominantly semantic network in participants with aphasia over both the short- and the long-term. The findings of the present study also suggest that right hemisphere involvement may be supportive rather than maladaptive, and that a large distributed perisylvian network in both cerebral hemispheres supports the facilitation of naming in individuals with aphasia. PMID:22882806

Supervised guiding long-short term memory for image caption generation based on object classes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Jian; Cao, Zhiguo; Xiao, Yang; Qi, Xinyuan

2018-03-01

The present models of image caption generation have the problems of image visual semantic information attenuation and errors in guidance information. In order to solve these problems, we propose a supervised guiding Long Short Term Memory model based on object classes, named S-gLSTM for short. It uses the object detection results from R-FCN as supervisory information with high confidence, and updates the guidance word set by judging whether the last output matches the supervisory information. S-gLSTM learns how to extract the current interested information from the image visual se-mantic information based on guidance word set. The interested information is fed into the S-gLSTM at each iteration as guidance information, to guide the caption generation. To acquire the text-related visual semantic information, the S-gLSTM fine-tunes the weights of the network through the back-propagation of the guiding loss. Complementing guidance information at each iteration solves the problem of visual semantic information attenuation in the traditional LSTM model. Besides, the supervised guidance information in our model can reduce the impact of the mismatched words on the caption generation. We test our model on MSCOCO2014 dataset, and obtain better performance than the state-of-the- art models.

Attention, Working Memory, and Grammaticality Judgment in Typical Young Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Pamela A.

2011-01-01

Purpose: To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Method: Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction…

Newly-acquired words are more phonologically robust in verbal short-term memory when they have associated semantic representations.

PubMed

Savill, Nicola; Ellis, Andrew W; Jefferies, Elizabeth

2017-04-01

Verbal short-term memory (STM) is a crucial cognitive function central to language learning, comprehension and reasoning, yet the processes that underlie this capacity are not fully understood. In particular, although STM primarily draws on a phonological code, interactions between long-term phonological and semantic representations might help to stabilise the phonological trace for words ("semantic binding hypothesis"). This idea was first proposed to explain the frequent phoneme recombination errors made by patients with semantic dementia when recalling words that are no longer fully understood. However, converging evidence in support of semantic binding is scant: it is unusual for studies of healthy participants to examine serial recall at the phoneme level and also it is difficult to separate the contribution of phonological-lexical knowledge from effects of word meaning. We used a new method to disentangle these influences in healthy individuals by training new 'words' with or without associated semantic information. We examined phonological coherence in immediate serial recall (ISR), both immediately and the day after training. Trained items were more likely to be recalled than novel nonwords, confirming the importance of phonological-lexical knowledge, and items with semantic associations were also produced more accurately than those with no meaning, at both time points. For semantically-trained items, there were fewer phoneme ordering and identity errors, and consequently more complete target items were produced in both correct and incorrect list positions. These data show that lexical-semantic knowledge improves the robustness of verbal STM at the sub-item level, even when the effect of phonological familiarity is taken into account. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Depth of Processing and Age Differences.

PubMed

Kheirzadeh, Shiela; Pakzadian, Sarah Sadat

2016-10-01

The present article is aimed to investigate whether there are any differences between youngsters and adults in their working and long-term memory functioning. The theory of Depth of Processing (Craik and Lockhart in J Verbal Learning Verbal Behav 11:671-684, 1972) discusses the varying degrees of strengths of memory traces as the result of differential levels of processing on the retrieved input. Additionally, they claim that there are three levels of visual, auditory and semantic processes applied on the stimuli in the short-term memory leading to discrepancy in the durability of the memory traces and the later ease of recall and retrieval. In the present article, it is tried to demonstrate if there are evidences of more durable memory traces formed after semantic, visual and auditory processions of the incoming language data in two groups of (a) children in their language learning critical age and (b) youngsters who have passed the critical age period. The comparisons of the results made using two-way ANOVAs revealed the superiority of semantic processing for both age groups in recall, retention and consequently recognition of the new English vocabularies by EFL learners.

Electrophysiological signatures of phonological and semantic maintenance in sentence repetition.

PubMed

Meltzer, Jed A; Kielar, Aneta; Panamsky, Lilia; Links, Kira A; Deschamps, Tiffany; Leigh, Rosie C

2017-08-01

Verbal short-term memory comprises resources for phonological rehearsal, which have been characterized anatomically, and for maintenance of semantic information, which are less understood. Sentence repetition tasks tap both processes interactively. To distinguish brain activity involved in phonological vs. semantic maintenance, we recorded magnetoencephalography during a sentence repetition task, incorporating three manipulations emphasizing one mechanism over the other. Participants heard sentences or word lists and attempted to repeat them verbatim after a 5-second delay. After MEG, participants completed a cued recall task testing how much they remembered of each sentence. Greater semantic engagement relative to phonological rehearsal was hypothesized for 1) sentences vs. word lists, 2) concrete vs. abstract sentences, and 3) well recalled vs. poorly recalled sentences. During auditory perception and the memory delay period, we found highly left-lateralized activation in the form of 8-30 Hz event-related desynchronization. Compared to abstract sentences, concrete sentences recruited posterior temporal cortex bilaterally, demonstrating a neural signature for the engagement of visual imagery in sentence maintenance. Maintenance of arbitrary word lists recruited right hemisphere dorsal regions, reflecting increased demands on phonological rehearsal. Sentences that were ultimately poorly recalled in the post-test also elicited extra right hemisphere activation when they were held in short-term memory, suggesting increased demands on phonological resources. Frontal midline theta oscillations also reflected phonological rather than semantic demand, being increased for word lists and poorly recalled sentences. These findings highlight distinct neural resources for phonological and semantic maintenance, with phonological maintenance associated with stronger oscillatory modulations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Resolving semantic and proactive interference in memory over the short-term.

PubMed

Atkins, Alexandra S; Berman, Marc G; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A; Lewis, Richard L; Jonides, John

2011-07-01

Interference is a major source of short-term errors of memory. The present investigation explores the relationship between two important forms of interference: proactive interference (PI), induced by the need to reject recently studied items no longer relevant to task performance, and semantic interference (SI), induced by the need to reject lures sharing a meaningful relationship with current memoranda. We explore the possibility that shared cognitive control processes are recruited to resolve both forms of interference. In Experiment 1, we find that the requirement to engage in articulatory suppression during the retention interval of tasks that induce either PI or SI increases both forms of interference similarly and selectively. In Experiment 2, we develop a task to examine PI and SI within the same experimental context. The results show interactive effects between factors that lead to the two forms of interference. Taken together, these findings support contextual-cuing models of short-term remembering (Nairne, Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 53-81 2002), where the context in which retrieval occurs can influence susceptibility to interference. Lastly, we discuss several theoretical hypotheses concerning the cognitive control processes that are recruited to resolve SI and PI in short-term remembering.

Resolving semantic and proactive interference in memory over the short-term

PubMed Central

Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A.; Lewis, Richard L.; Jonides, John

2011-01-01

Interference is a major source of short-term errors of memory. The present investigation explores the relationship between two important forms of interference: proactive interference (PI), induced by the need to reject recently studied items no longer relevant to task performance, and semantic interference (SI), induced by the need to reject lures sharing a meaningful relationship with current memoranda. We explore the possibility that shared cognitive control processes are recruited to resolve both forms of interference. In Experiment 1, we find that the requirement to engage in articulatory suppression during the retention interval of tasks that induce either PI or SI increases both forms of interference similarly and selectively. In Experiment 2, we develop a task to examine PI and SI within the same experimental context. The results show interactive effects between factors that lead to the two forms of interference. Taken together, these findings support contextual-cuing models of short-term remembering (Nairne, Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 53–81 2002), where the context in which retrieval occurs can influence susceptibility to interference. Lastly, we discuss several theoretical hypotheses concerning the cognitive control processes that are recruited to resolve SI and PI in short-term remembering. PMID:21327614

Three more semantic serial position functions and a SIMPLE explanation.

PubMed

Kelley, Matthew R; Neath, Ian; Surprenant, Aimée M

2013-05-01

There are innumerable demonstrations of serial position functions-with characteristic primacy and recency effects-in episodic tasks, but there are only a handful of such demonstrations in semantic memory tasks, and those demonstrations have used only two types of stimuli. Here, we provide three more examples of serial position functions when recalling from semantic memory. Participants were asked to reconstruct the order of (1) two cartoon theme song lyrics, (2) the seven Harry Potter books, and (3) two sets of movies, and all three demonstrations yielded conventional-looking serial position functions with primacy and recency effects. The data were well-fit by SIMPLE, a local distinctiveness model of memory that was originally designed to account for serial position effects in short- and long-term episodic memory. According to SIMPLE, serial position functions in both episodic and semantic memory tasks arise from the same type of processing: Items that are more separated from their close neighbors in psychological space at the time of recall will be better remembered. We argue that currently available evidence suggests that serial position functions observed when recalling items that are presumably in semantic memory arise because of the same processes as those observed when recalling items that are presumably in episodic memory.

FN400 potentials are functionally identical to N400 potentials and reflect semantic processing during recognition testing

PubMed Central

Voss, Joel L.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

The “F” in FN400 denotes a more frontal scalp distribution relative to the morphologically similar N400 component—a distinction consistent with the hypothesized distinct roles of FN400 in familiarity memory versus N400 in language. However, no direct comparisons have substantiated these assumed dissimilarities. To this end, we manipulated short-term semantic priming during a recognition test. Semantic priming effects on N400 were indistinguishable from memory effects at the same latency, and semantic priming strongly modulated the “FN400,” despite having no influence on familiarity memory. Thus, no evidence suggested either electrophysiological or functional differences between the N400 and FN400, and findings were contrary to the linking of the “FN400” to familiarity. Instead, it appears that semantic/conceptual priming (reflected in the N400) occurs during recognition tests, and is frequently (mis)labeled as FN400 and attributed to familiarity. PMID:20701709

Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breadmore, Helen L.; Carroll, Julia M.

2016-01-01

Little is known about implicit morphological processing in typical and atypical readers. These studies investigate this using a probe detection task with lures sharing morphological, orthographic, or semantic overlap with the probe. Intermediate and advanced readers (reading ages = 9;1-12;9) perform more poorly when there is more linguistic…

Paced Reading in Semantic Dementia: Word Knowledge Contributes to Phoneme Binding in Rapid Speech Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jefferies, Elizabeth; Grogan, John; Mapelli, Cristina; Isella, Valeria

2012-01-01

Patients with semantic dementia (SD) show deficits in phoneme binding in immediate serial recall: when attempting to reproduce a sequence of words that they no longer fully understand, they show frequent migrations of phonemes between items (e.g., cap, frog recalled as "frap, cog"). This suggests that verbal short-term memory emerges directly from…

Serial position effects in semantic memory: reconstructing the order of verses of hymns.

PubMed

Maylor, Elizabeth A

2002-12-01

Serial position effects (primacy and recency) have been consistently demonstrated in both short- and long-term episodic memory tasks. The search for corresponding effects in semantic memory tasks (e.g., reconstructing the order of U.S. presidents) has been confounded by factors such as differential exposure to stimuli. In the present study, the stimuli were six-verse hymns that would have been sung from the first to the last verse by churchgoers on numerous occasions. Participants were presented with the verses of each hymn in random order and were required to reconstruct the correct order. Primacy and recency effects were significantly more evident for churchgoers than for nonchurchgoers. Moreover, error gradients were steeper than chance for churchgoers but not for nonchurchgoers; in other words, churchgoers' errors were more likely to be close to the correct position than further away. These findings provide the first unequivocal demonstration of serial position effects in semantic memory.

SU30. Long-Term Memory Deficits in Schizophrenia: Are All Things Equal?

PubMed Central

Rossell, Susan

2017-01-01

Abstract Background: Kraepelin and Bleulernoted that patients with schizophrenia had significant cognitive deficits over a century ago; however, their observations with regard to long-term memory have not born out within empirical studies. They reported that episodic memory was intact but indicated that organization of memories, or semantic memory, was disordered. This study aimed to synthesize a century of research in the 2 long-term memory processes of episodic and semantic memory across the psychosis continuum: chronic patients, first-episode patients, high risk for psychosis cohorts, and persons with high schizotypy. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was completed within the 2 domains of long-term memory across the psychosis continuum. Search terms included long-term memory, episodic, semantic, and derivations of these terms. The data were synthesized independently for episodic and semantic memory. Four independent populations were investigated: chronic patients, first-episode patients, high risk for psychosis cohorts, and persons with high schizotypy. Our approach followed the PRISMA guidelines. Thus, the pooled mean effect sizes are reported for 8 analyses. These effect sizes represent case cohort in comparison to a healthy control cohort. Results: The results were as follows, for episodic memory: chronic patients d = 1.12, first-episode patients d = 1.12, high risk d = 1.14, and high schizotypy d = 0.13. Thus, establishing that there is poor evidence of episodic memory deficits in persons with high schizotypy. For semantic memory, the literature showed a different pattern: chronic patients d = 1.2, first-episode patients d = 1.08, high risk d = 1.16, and high schizotypy d = 0.95. Thus, a consistent degree of semantic memory deficits across the continuum. Conclusion: The literature suggests a dissociated pattern of long-term memory deficits; whereby semantic memory abnormalities are more likely to be considered endophenotypes or cognitive markers for schizophrenia than episodic memory deficits. Differential patterns of semantic memory organization are argued to be present prior to the onset of the disorder. There is additional evidence to suggest that idiosyncratic storage of semantic material underlies the development of the usual beliefs and speech patterns present in the forms of delusions and formal thought disorder. Consequently, semantic memory might be a useful target for cognitive remediation.

Correlation between Gray/White Matter Volume and Cognition in Healthy Elderly People

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taki, Yasuyuki; Kinomura, Shigeo; Sato, Kazunori; Goto, Ryoi; Wu, Kai; Kawashima, Ryuta; Fukuda, Hiroshi

2011-01-01

This study applied volumetric analysis and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of brain magnetic resonance (MR) images to assess whether correlations exist between global and regional gray/white matter volume and the cognitive functions of semantic memory and short-term memory, which are relatively well preserved with aging, using MR image data from 109…

Learning to Read in Arabic: Reading, Syntactic, Orthographic and Working Memory Skills in Normally Achieving and Poor Arabic Readers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abu-Rabia, Salim

1995-01-01

Examines relationships between phonological skills and reading in 143 Arab children in Arab villages of central Israel. Finds that a word recognition test was highly correlated with phonological skills, semantic processing, syntactic knowledge, and short-term memory, and that poor readers significantly lagged in skill development. Discusses…

Hemispheric asymmetries in discourse processing: evidence from false memories for lists and texts.

PubMed

Ben-Artzi, Elisheva; Faust, Miriam; Moeller, Edna

2009-01-01

Previous research suggests that the right hemisphere (RH) may contribute uniquely to discourse and text processing by activating and maintaining a wide range of meanings, including more distantly related meanings. The present study used the word-lists false memory paradigm [Roediger, H. L., III, & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803-814.] to examine the hypothesis that difference between the two cerebral hemispheres in discourse processing may be due, at least partly, to memory representations for implicit text-related semantic information. Specifically, we tested the susceptibility of the left hemisphere (LH) and RH to unpresented target words following the presentation of semantically related words appearing in either word lists or short texts. Findings showed that the RH produced more false alarms than the LH for unpresented target words following either word lists or texts. These findings reveal hemispheric differences in memory for semantically related information and suggest that RH advantage in long-term maintenance of a wide range of text-related word meanings may be one aspect of its unique contribution to the construction of a discourse model. The results support the RH coarse semantic coding theory [Beeman, M. (1998). Coarse semantic coding and discourse comprehension. In M. Beeman & C. Chiarello (Eds.), Right hemisphere language comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience (pp. 255-284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.] and suggest that hemispheric differences in semantic processing during language comprehension extend also to verbal memory.

The Effect of Consistency on Short-Term Memory for Scenes.

PubMed

Gong, Mingliang; Xuan, Yuming; Xu, Xinwen; Fu, Xiaolan

2017-01-01

Which is more detectable, the change of a consistent or an inconsistent object in a scene? This question has been debated for decades. We noted that the change of objects in scenes might simultaneously be accompanied with gist changes. In the present study we aimed to examine how the alteration of gist, as well as the consistency of the changed objects, modulated change detection. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the semantic content by either keeping or changing the consistency of the scene. Results showed that the changes of consistent and inconsistent scenes were equally detected. More importantly, the changes were more accurately detected when scene consistency changed than when the consistency remained unchanged, regardless of the consistency of the memory scenes. A phase-scrambled version of stimuli was adopted in Experiment 2 to decouple the possible confounding effect of low-level factors. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effect found in Experiment 1 was indeed due to the change of high-level semantic consistency rather than the change of low-level physical features. Together, the study suggests that the change of consistency plays an important role in scene short-term memory, which might be attributed to the sensitivity to the change of semantic content.

The Effect of Consistency on Short-Term Memory for Scenes

PubMed Central

Gong, Mingliang; Xuan, Yuming; Xu, Xinwen; Fu, Xiaolan

2017-01-01

Which is more detectable, the change of a consistent or an inconsistent object in a scene? This question has been debated for decades. We noted that the change of objects in scenes might simultaneously be accompanied with gist changes. In the present study we aimed to examine how the alteration of gist, as well as the consistency of the changed objects, modulated change detection. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the semantic content by either keeping or changing the consistency of the scene. Results showed that the changes of consistent and inconsistent scenes were equally detected. More importantly, the changes were more accurately detected when scene consistency changed than when the consistency remained unchanged, regardless of the consistency of the memory scenes. A phase-scrambled version of stimuli was adopted in Experiment 2 to decouple the possible confounding effect of low-level factors. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effect found in Experiment 1 was indeed due to the change of high-level semantic consistency rather than the change of low-level physical features. Together, the study suggests that the change of consistency plays an important role in scene short-term memory, which might be attributed to the sensitivity to the change of semantic content. PMID:29046654

Memory strategy training in children with cerebral infarcts related to sickle cell disease.

PubMed

Yerys, Benjamin E; White, Desirée A; Salorio, Cynthia F; McKinstry, Robert; Moinuddin, Asif; DeBaun, Michael

2003-06-01

Cerebral infarcts occur in approximately 30% of children with sickle cell disease (SCD), but little information exists regarding remediation of associated cognitive deficits. The authors examined the benefits of training children with infarcts to use memory strategies. Six children with SCD-related infarcts received academic tutoring; three of these children received additional training in memory strategies (silent rehearsal to facilitate short-term memory and semantic organization to facilitate long-term memory). The performance of children receiving strategy training appeared to improve more than that of children receiving only tutoring. Memory in children with SCD-related infarcts may be enhanced through strategy training.

Phonology without semantics? Good enough for verbal short-term memory. Evidence from a patient with semantic dementia.

PubMed

Papagno, Costanza; Vernice, Mirta; Cecchetto, Carlo

2013-03-01

There is considerable evidence that long-term knowledge has an influence on short-term memory (STM) performance. This reflects the activation of long-term representations involved in perceiving and comprehending spoken language. Still, this type of long-term knowledge might be of two different kinds. STM performance might be facilitated by information about the meaning of the word, or, alternatively, by familiarity with its phonological form. We investigated these two alternatives by assessing word span in MC, a patient with semantic dementia. Four different lists of words were used: known words, words whose phonological form was known by the patient although she could not report its meaning, words that the patient did not recognize as words and judged as nonwords, nonwords. The patient's performance was compared to that of six matched controls. MC did not differ from controls in the first two types of lists and performed at the same level with both, while for words whose phonological form was unknown (and therefore not recognized as words) her performance was comparable to that with nonwords; also, with this type of item, she produced significantly more phonemic substitutions than controls. The results show that long-term knowledge facilitates immediate serial recall. However, this facilitation is due to familiarity with phonological representations rather than to knowledge of meaning. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Diffusive-Particle Theory of Free Recall

PubMed Central

Fumarola, Francesco

2017-01-01

Diffusive models of free recall have been recently introduced in the memory literature, but their potential remains largely unexplored. In this paper, a diffusive model of short-term verbal memory is considered, in which the psychological state of the subject is encoded as the instantaneous position of a particle diffusing over a semantic graph. The model is particularly suitable for studying the dependence of free-recall observables on the semantic properties of the words to be recalled. Besides predicting some well-known experimental features (forward asymmetry, semantic clustering, word-length effect), a novel prediction is obtained on the relationship between the contiguity effect and the syllabic length of words; shorter words, by way of their wider semantic range, are predicted to be characterized by stronger forward contiguity. A fresh analysis of archival free-recall data allows to confirm this prediction. PMID:29085521

Autobiographical Memory Deficits in Alcohol-Dependent Patients with Short- and Long-Term Abstinence.

PubMed

Nandrino, Jean-Louis; El Haj, Mohamad; Torre, Julie; Naye, Delphine; Douchet, Helyette; Danel, Thierry; Cottençin, Oliver

2016-04-01

Autobiographical memory (AM) enables the storage and retrieval of life experiences that allow individuals to build their sense of identity. Several AM impairments have been described in patients with alcohol abuse disorders without assessing whether such deficits can be recovered. This cross-sectional study aimed to identify whether the semantic (SAM) and episodic (EAM) dimensions of AM are affected in individuals with alcohol dependence after short-term abstinence (STA) or long-term abstinence (LTA). A second aim of this study was to examine the factors that could disrupt the efficiency of semantic and episodic AM (the impact of depression severity, cognitive functions, recent or early traumatic events, and drinking history variables). After clinical and cognitive evaluations (alcohol consumption, depression, anxiety, IQ, memory performance), AM was assessed with the Autobiographical Memory Interview in patients with recent (between 4 and 6 weeks) and longer (at least 6 months) abstinence. Participants were asked to retrieve the number and nature of traumatic or painful life experiences in recent or early life periods (using the Childhood Traumatic Events Scale). The 2 abstinent groups had lower global EAM and SAM scores than the control group. These scores were comparable for both abstinent groups. For childhood events, no significant differences were observed in SAM for both groups compared with control participants. For early adulthood and recent events, both STA and LTA groups had lower scores on both SAM and EAM. Moreover, there was a negative correlation between the length of substance consumption and SAM scores. This study highlighted a specific AM disorder in both episodic and semantic dimensions. These deficits remained after 6 months of abstinence. This AM impairment may be explained by compromised encoding and consolidation of memories during bouts of drinking. Copyright © 2016 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Acute effects of exergames on cognitive function of institutionalized older persons: a single-blinded, randomized and controlled pilot study.

PubMed

Monteiro-Junior, Renato Sobral; da Silva Figueiredo, Luiz Felipe; Maciel-Pinheiro, Paulo de Tarso; Abud, Erick Lohan Rodrigues; Braga, Ana Elisa Mendes Montalvão; Barca, Maria Lage; Engedal, Knut; Nascimento, Osvaldo José M; Deslandes, Andrea Camaz; Laks, Jerson

2017-06-01

Improvements on balance, gait and cognition are some of the benefits of exergames. Few studies have investigated the cognitive effects of exergames in institutionalized older persons. To assess the acute effect of a single session of exergames on cognition of institutionalized older persons. Nineteen institutionalized older persons were randomly allocated to Wii (WG, n = 10, 86 ± 7 year, two males) or control groups (CG, n = 9, 86 ± 5 year, one male). The WG performed six exercises with virtual reality, whereas CG performed six exercises without virtual reality. Verbal fluency test (VFT), digit span forward and digit span backward were used to evaluate semantic memory/executive function, short-term memory and work memory, respectively, before and after exergames and Δ post- to pre-session (absolute) and Δ % (relative) were calculated. Parametric (t independent test) and nonparametric (Mann-Whitney test) statistics and effect size were applied to tests for efficacy. VFT was statistically significant within WG (-3.07, df = 9, p = 0.013). We found no statistically significant differences between the two groups (p > 0.05). Effect size between groups of Δ % (median = 21 %) showed moderate effect for WG (0.63). Our data show moderate improvement of semantic memory/executive function due to exergames session. It is possible that cognitive brain areas are activated during exergames, increasing clinical response. A single session of exergames showed no significant improvement in short-term memory, working memory and semantic memory/executive function. The effect size for verbal fluency was promising, and future studies on this issue should be developed. RBR-6rytw2.

Semantic and Phonological Loop Effects on Verbal Working Memory in Middle-Age Adults with Mental Retardation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kittler, Phyllis; Krinsky-McHale, Sharon J.; Devenny, Darlynne A.

2004-01-01

Semantic and phonological loop effects on verbal working memory were examined among middle-age adults with Down syndrome and those with unspecified mental retardation in the context of Baddeley's working memory model. Recall was poorer for phonologically similar, semantically similar, and long words compared to recall of dissimilar short words.…

Information Warfare: Evaluation of Operator Information Processing Models

DTIC Science & Technology

1997-10-01

that people can describe or report, including both episodic and semantic information. Declarative memory contains a network of knowledge represented...second dimension corresponds roughly to the distinction between episodic and semantic memory that is commonly made in cognitive psychology. Episodic ...3 is long-term memory for the discourse, a subset of episodic memory . Partition 4 is long-term semantic memory , or the knowledge-base. According to

The role of the frontal cortex in memory: an investigation of the Von Restorff effect

PubMed Central

Elhalal, Anat; Davelaar, Eddy J.; Usher, Marius

2014-01-01

Evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging indicate that the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in human memory. Although frontal patients are able to form new memories, these memories appear qualitatively different from those of controls by lacking distinctiveness. Neuroimaging studies of memory indicate activation in the PFC under deep encoding conditions, and under conditions of semantic elaboration. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the PFC enhances memory by extracting differences and commonalities in the studied material. To test this hypothesis, we carried out an experimental investigation to test the relationship between the PFC-dependent factors and semantic factors associated with common and specific features of words. These experiments were performed using Free-Recall of word lists with healthy adults, exploiting the correlation between PFC function and fluid intelligence. As predicted, a correlation was found between fluid intelligence and the Von-Restorff effect (better memory for semantic isolates, e.g., isolate “cat” within category members of “fruit”). Moreover, memory for the semantic isolate was found to depend on the isolate's serial position. The isolate item tends to be recalled first, in comparison to non-isolates, suggesting that the process interacts with short term memory. These results are captured within a computational model of free recall, which includes a PFC mechanism that is sensitive to both commonality and distinctiveness, sustaining a trade-off between the two. PMID:25018721

Short theta burst stimulation to left frontal cortex prior to encoding enhances subsequent recognition memory

PubMed Central

Demeter, Elise; Mirdamadi, Jasmine L.; Meehan, Sean K.; Taylor, Stephan F.

2016-01-01

Deep semantic encoding of verbal stimuli can aid in later successful retrieval of those stimuli from long-term episodic memory. Evidence from numerous neuropsychological and neuroimaging experiments demonstrate regions in left prefrontal cortex, including left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), are important for processes related to encoding. Here, we investigated the relationship between left DLPFC activity during encoding and successful subsequent memory with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). In a pair of experiments using a 2-session within-subjects design, we stimulated either left DLPFC or a control region (Vertex) with a single 2-s train of short theta burst stimulation (sTBS) during a semantic encoding task and then gave participants a recognition memory test. We found that subsequent memory was enhanced on the day left DLPFC was stimulated, relative to the day Vertex was stimulated, and that DLPFC stimulation also increased participants’ confidence in their decisions during the recognition task. We also explored the time course of how long the effects of sTBS persisted. Our data suggest 2 s of sTBS to left DLPFC is capable of enhancing subsequent memory for items encoded up to 15 s following stimulation. Collectively, these data demonstrate sTBS is capable of enhancing long-term memory and provide evidence that TBS protocols are a potentially powerful tool for modulating cognitive function. PMID:27098772

Structured Semantic Knowledge Can Emerge Automatically from Predicting Word Sequences in Child-Directed Speech

PubMed Central

Huebner, Philip A.; Willits, Jon A.

2018-01-01

Previous research has suggested that distributional learning mechanisms may contribute to the acquisition of semantic knowledge. However, distributional learning mechanisms, statistical learning, and contemporary “deep learning” approaches have been criticized for being incapable of learning the kind of abstract and structured knowledge that many think is required for acquisition of semantic knowledge. In this paper, we show that recurrent neural networks, trained on noisy naturalistic speech to children, do in fact learn what appears to be abstract and structured knowledge. We trained two types of recurrent neural networks (Simple Recurrent Network, and Long Short-Term Memory) to predict word sequences in a 5-million-word corpus of speech directed to children ages 0–3 years old, and assessed what semantic knowledge they acquired. We found that learned internal representations are encoding various abstract grammatical and semantic features that are useful for predicting word sequences. Assessing the organization of semantic knowledge in terms of the similarity structure, we found evidence of emergent categorical and hierarchical structure in both models. We found that the Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) and SRN are both learning very similar kinds of representations, but the LSTM achieved higher levels of performance on a quantitative evaluation. We also trained a non-recurrent neural network, Skip-gram, on the same input to compare our results to the state-of-the-art in machine learning. We found that Skip-gram achieves relatively similar performance to the LSTM, but is representing words more in terms of thematic compared to taxonomic relations, and we provide reasons why this might be the case. Our findings show that a learning system that derives abstract, distributed representations for the purpose of predicting sequential dependencies in naturalistic language may provide insight into emergence of many properties of the developing semantic system. PMID:29520243

Semantic strategy training increases memory performance and brain activity in patients with prefrontal cortex lesions.

PubMed

Miotto, Eliane C; Savage, Cary R; Evans, Jonathan J; Wilson, Barbara A; Martin, Maria G M; Balardin, Joana B; Barros, Fabio G; Garrido, Griselda; Teixeira, Manoel J; Amaro Junior, Edson

2013-03-01

Memory deficit is a frequent cognitive disorder following acquired prefrontal cortex lesions. In the present study, we investigated the brain correlates of a short semantic strategy training and memory performance of patients with distinct prefrontal cortex lesions using fMRI and cognitive tests. Twenty-one adult patients with post-acute prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions, twelve with left dorsolateral PFC (LPFC) and nine with bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (BOFC) were assessed before and after a short cognitive semantic training using a verbal memory encoding paradigm during scanning and neuropsychological tests outside the scanner. After the semantic strategy training both groups of patients showed significant behavioral improvement in verbal memory recall and use of semantic strategies. In the LPFC group, greater activity in left inferior and medial frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus and insula was found after training. For the BOFC group, a greater activation was found in the left parietal cortex, right cingulated and precuneus after training. The activation of these specific areas in the memory and executive networks following cognitive training was associated to compensatory brain mechanisms and application of the semantic strategy. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Auditory attention strategy depends on target linguistic properties and spatial configurationa)

PubMed Central

McCloy, Daniel R.; Lee, Adrian K. C.

2015-01-01

Whether crossing a busy intersection or attending a large dinner party, listeners sometimes need to attend to multiple spatially distributed sound sources or streams concurrently. How they achieve this is not clear—some studies suggest that listeners cannot truly simultaneously attend to separate streams, but instead combine attention switching with short-term memory to achieve something resembling divided attention. This paper presents two oddball detection experiments designed to investigate whether directing attention to phonetic versus semantic properties of the attended speech impacts listeners' ability to divide their auditory attention across spatial locations. Each experiment uses four spatially distinct streams of monosyllabic words, variation in cue type (providing phonetic or semantic information), and requiring attention to one or two locations. A rapid button-press response paradigm is employed to minimize the role of short-term memory in performing the task. Results show that differences in the spatial configuration of attended and unattended streams interact with linguistic properties of the speech streams to impact performance. Additionally, listeners may leverage phonetic information to make oddball detection judgments even when oddballs are semantically defined. Both of these effects appear to be mediated by the overall complexity of the acoustic scene. PMID:26233011

Escaping the recent past: Which stimulus dimensions influence proactive interference?

PubMed Central

Craig, Kimberly S.; Berman, Marc G.; Jonides, John; Lustig, Cindy

2013-01-01

Proactive interference occurs when information from the past disrupts current processing and is a major source of confusion and errors in short-term memory (Wickens, Born & Allen, 1963). The present investigation examines potential boundary conditions for interference, testing the hypothesis that potential competitors must be similar along task-relevant dimensions to influence proactive interference effects. We manipulated both the type of task being completed (Experiments 1, 2 and 3) and dimensions of similarity irrelevant to the current task (Experiments 4 and 5) to determine how the recent presentation of a probe item would affect the speed with which participants could reject that item. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 contrasted short-term memory judgments, which require temporal information, with semantic and perceptual judgments, for which temporal information is irrelevant. In Experiments 4 and 5, task-irrelevant information (perceptual similarity) was manipulated within the recent probes task. We found that interference from past items affected short-term memory (STM) task performance but did not affect performance in semantic or perceptual judgment tasks. Conversely, similarity along a nominally-irrelevant perceptual dimension did not affect the magnitude of interference in STM tasks. Results are consistent with the view that items in STM are represented by noisy codes consisting of multiple dimensions, and that interference occurs when items are similar to each other and thus compete along the dimensions relevant to target selection. PMID:23297049

Forced to remember: when memory is biased by salient information.

PubMed

Santangelo, Valerio

2015-04-15

The last decades have seen a rapid growing in the attempt to understand the key factors involved in the internal memory representation of the external world. Visual salience have been found to provide a major contribution in predicting the probability for an item/object embedded in a complex setting (i.e., a natural scene) to be encoded and then remembered later on. Here I review the existing literature highlighting the impact of perceptual- (based on low-level sensory features) and semantics-related salience (based on high-level knowledge) on short-term memory representation, along with the neural mechanisms underpinning the interplay between these factors. The available evidence reveal that both perceptual- and semantics-related factors affect attention selection mechanisms during the encoding of natural scenes. Biasing internal memory representation, both perceptual and semantics factors increase the probability to remember high- to the detriment of low-saliency items. The available evidence also highlight an interplay between these factors, with a reduced impact of perceptual-related salience in biasing memory representation as a function of the increasing availability of semantics-related salient information. The neural mechanisms underpinning this interplay involve the activation of different portions of the frontoparietal attention control network. Ventral regions support the assignment of selection/encoding priorities based on high-level semantics, while the involvement of dorsal regions reflects priorities assignment based on low-level sensory features. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Type-specific proactive interference in patients with semantic and phonological STM deficits.

PubMed

Harris, Lara; Olson, Andrew; Humphreys, Glyn

2014-01-01

Prior neuropsychological evidence suggests that semantic and phonological components of short-term memory (STM) are functionally and neurologically distinct. The current paper examines proactive interference (PI) from semantic and phonological information in two STM-impaired patients, DS (semantic STM deficit) and AK (phonological STM deficit). In Experiment 1 probe recognition tasks with open and closed sets of stimuli were used. Phonological PI was assessed using nonword items, and semantic and phonological PI was assessed using words. In Experiment 2 phonological and semantic PI was elicited by an item recognition probe test with stimuli that bore phonological and semantic relations to the probes. The data suggested heightened phonological PI for the semantic STM patient, and exaggerated effects of semantic PI in the phonological STM case. The findings are consistent with an account of extremely rapid decay of activated type-specific representations in cases of severely impaired phonological and semantic STM.

Temporal information processing in short- and long-term memory of patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Landgraf, Steffen; Steingen, Joerg; Eppert, Yvonne; Niedermeyer, Ulrich; van der Meer, Elke; Krueger, Frank

2011-01-01

Cognitive deficits of patients with schizophrenia have been largely recognized as core symptoms of the disorder. One neglected factor that contributes to these deficits is the comprehension of time. In the present study, we assessed temporal information processing and manipulation from short- and long-term memory in 34 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 34 matched healthy controls. On the short-term memory temporal-order reconstruction task, an incidental or intentional learning strategy was deployed. Patients showed worse overall performance than healthy controls. The intentional learning strategy led to dissociable performance improvement in both groups. Whereas healthy controls improved on a performance measure (serial organization), patients improved on an error measure (inappropriate semantic clustering) when using the intentional instead of the incidental learning strategy. On the long-term memory script-generation task, routine and non-routine events of everyday activities (e.g., buying groceries) had to be generated in either chronological or inverted temporal order. Patients were slower than controls at generating events in the chronological routine condition only. They also committed more sequencing and boundary errors in the inverted conditions. The number of irrelevant events was higher in patients in the chronological, non-routine condition. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia imprecisely access temporal information from short- and long-term memory. In short-term memory, processing of temporal information led to a reduction in errors rather than, as was the case in healthy controls, to an improvement in temporal-order recall. When accessing temporal information from long-term memory, patients were slower and committed more sequencing, boundary, and intrusion errors. Together, these results suggest that time information can be accessed and processed only imprecisely by patients who provide evidence for impaired time comprehension. This could contribute to symptomatic cognitive deficits and strategic inefficiency in schizophrenia.

Episodic representations support early semantic learning: evidence from midazolam induced amnesia.

PubMed

Merritt, Paul; Hirshman, Elliot; Zamani, Shane; Hsu, John; Berrigan, Michael

2006-07-01

Current controversy exists regarding the role of episodic representations in the formation of long-term semantic memories. Using the drug midazolam to induce temporary amnesia we tested participants' memories for newly learned facts in a semantic cue condition or an episodic and semantic cue condition. Following midazolam administration, memory performance was superior in the episodic and semantic condition, suggesting early semantic learning is supported by episodic representations.

NEREC, an effective brain mapping protocol for combined language and long-term memory functions.

PubMed

Perrone-Bertolotti, Marcela; Girard, Cléa; Cousin, Emilie; Vidal, Juan Ricardo; Pichat, Cédric; Kahane, Philippe; Baciu, Monica

2015-12-01

Temporal lobe epilepsy can induce functional plasticity in temporoparietal networks involved in language and long-term memory processing. Previous studies in healthy subjects have revealed the relative difficulty for this network to respond effectively across different experimental designs, as compared to more reactive regions such as frontal lobes. For a protocol to be optimal for clinical use, it has to first show robust effects in a healthy cohort. In this study, we developed a novel experimental paradigm entitled NEREC, which is able to reveal the robust participation of temporoparietal networks in a uniquely combined language and memory task, validated in an fMRI study with healthy subjects. Concretely, NEREC is composed of two runs: (a) an intermixed language-memory task (confrontation naming associated with encoding in nonverbal items, NE) to map language (i.e., word retrieval and lexico-semantic processes) combined with simultaneous long-term verbal memory encoding (NE items named but also explicitly memorized) and (b) a memory retrieval task of items encoded during NE (word recognition, REC) intermixed with new items. Word recognition is based on both perceptual-semantic familiarity (feeling of 'know') and accessing stored memory representations (remembering). In order to maximize the remembering and recruitment of medial temporal lobe structures, we increased REC difficulty by changing the modality of stimulus presentation (from nonverbal during NE to verbal during REC). We report that (a) temporoparietal activation during NE was attributable to both lexico-semantic (language) and memory (episodic encoding and semantic retrieval) processes; that (b) encoding activated the left hippocampus, bilateral fusiform, and bilateral inferior temporal gyri; and that (c) task recognition (recollection) activated the right hippocampus and bilateral but predominant left fusiform gyrus. The novelty of this protocol consists of (a) combining two tasks in one (language and long-term memory encoding/recall) instead of applying isolated tasks to map temporoparietal regions, (b) analyzing NE data based on performances recorded during REC, (c) double-mapping networks involved in naming and in long-term memory encoding and retrieval, (d) focusing on remembering with hippocampal activation and familiarity judgment with lateral temporal cortices activation, and (e) short duration of examination and feasibility. These aspects are of particular interest in patients with TLE, who frequently show impairment of these cognitive functions. Here, we show that the novel protocol is suited for this clinical evaluation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Analysis of acute naproxen administration on memory in young adults: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.

PubMed

Wilson, Jack H; Criss, Amy H; Spangler, Sean A; Walukevich, Katherine; Hewett, Sandra

2017-10-01

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs work by non-selectively inhibiting cyclooxygenase enzymes. Evidence indicates that metabolites of the cyclooxygenase pathway play a critical role in the process of learning and memory. We evaluated whether acute naproxen treatment impairs short-term working memory, episodic memory, or semantic memory in a young, healthy adult population. Participants received a single dose of placebo or naproxen (750 mg) in random order separated by 7-10 days. Two hours following administration, participants completed five memory tasks. The administration of acute high-dose naproxen had no effect on memory in healthy young adults.

The Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model: theoretical, empirical, and clinical advances

PubMed Central

Rönnberg, Jerker; Lunner, Thomas; Zekveld, Adriana; Sörqvist, Patrik; Danielsson, Henrik; Lyxell, Björn; Dahlström, Örjan; Signoret, Carine; Stenfelt, Stefan; Pichora-Fuller, M. Kathleen; Rudner, Mary

2013-01-01

Working memory is important for online language processing during conversation. We use it to maintain relevant information, to inhibit or ignore irrelevant information, and to attend to conversation selectively. Working memory helps us to keep track of and actively participate in conversation, including taking turns and following the gist. This paper examines the Ease of Language Understanding model (i.e., the ELU model, Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg et al., 2008) in light of new behavioral and neural findings concerning the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in uni-modal and bimodal language processing. The new ELU model is a meaning prediction system that depends on phonological and semantic interactions in rapid implicit and slower explicit processing mechanisms that both depend on WMC albeit in different ways. It is based on findings that address the relationship between WMC and (a) early attention processes in listening to speech, (b) signal processing in hearing aids and its effects on short-term memory, (c) inhibition of speech maskers and its effect on episodic long-term memory, (d) the effects of hearing impairment on episodic and semantic long-term memory, and finally, (e) listening effort. New predictions and clinical implications are outlined. Comparisons with other WMC and speech perception models are made. PMID:23874273

Lexicality Effects in Word and Nonword Recall of Semantic Dementia and Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia

PubMed Central

Reilly, Jamie; Troche, Joshua; Chatel, Alison; Park, Hyejin; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Antonucci, Sharon M.; Martin, Nadine

2012-01-01

Background Verbal working memory is an essential component of many language functions, including sentence comprehension and word learning. As such, working memory has emerged as a domain of intense research interest both in aphasiology and in the broader field of cognitive neuroscience. The integrity of verbal working memory encoding relies on a fluid interaction between semantic and phonological processes. That is, we encode verbal detail using many cues related to both the sound and meaning of words. Lesion models can provide an effective means of parsing the contributions of phonological or semantic impairment to recall performance. Methods and Procedures We employed the lesion model approach here by contrasting the nature of lexicality errors incurred during recall of word and nonword sequences by 3individuals with progressive nonfluent aphasia (a phonological dominant impairment) compared to that of 2 individuals with semantic dementia (a semantic dominant impairment). We focused on psycholinguistic attributes of correctly recalled stimuli relative to those that elicited a lexicality error (i.e., nonword → word OR word → nonword). Outcomes and results Patients with semantic dementia showed greater sensitivity to phonological attributes (e.g., phoneme length, wordlikeness) of the target items relative to semantic attributes (e.g., familiarity). Patients with PNFA showed the opposite pattern, marked by sensitivity to word frequency, age of acquisition, familiarity, and imageability. Conclusions We interpret these results in favor of a processing strategy such that in the context of a focal phonological impairment patients revert to an over-reliance on preserved semantic processing abilities. In contrast, a focal semantic impairment forces both reliance upon and hypersensitivity to phonological attributes of target words. We relate this interpretation to previous hypotheses about the nature of verbal short-term memory in progressive aphasia. PMID:23486736

The impact of intelligence on memory and executive functions of children with temporal lobe epilepsy: Methodological concerns with clinical relevance.

PubMed

Rzezak, Patricia; Guimarães, Catarina A; Guerreiro, Marilisa M; Valente, Kette D

2017-05-01

Patients with TLE are prone to have lower IQ scores than healthy controls. Nevertheless, the impact of IQ differences is not usually considered in studies that compared the cognitive functioning of children with and without epilepsy. This study aimed to determine the effect of using IQ as a covariate on memory and attentional/executive functions of children with TLE. Thirty-eight children and adolescents with TLE and 28 healthy controls paired as to age, gender, and sociodemographic factors were evaluated with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery for memory and executive functions. The authors conducted three analyses to verify the impact of IQ scores on the other cognitive domains. First, we compared performance on cognitive tests without controlling for IQ differences between groups. Second, we performed the same analyses, but we included IQ as a confounding factor. Finally, we evaluated the predictive value of IQ on cognitive functioning. Although patients had IQ score in the normal range, they showed lower IQ scores than controls (p = 0.001). When we did not consider IQ in the analyses, patients had worse performance in verbal and visual memory (short and long-term), semantic memory, sustained, divided and selective attention, mental flexibility and mental tracking for semantic information. By using IQ as a covariate, patients showed worse performance only in verbal memory (long-term), semantic memory, sustained and divided attention and in mental flexibility. IQ was a predictor factor of verbal and visual memory (immediate and delayed), working memory, mental flexibility and mental tracking for semantic information. Intelligence level had a significant impact on memory and executive functioning of children and adolescents with TLE without intellectual disability. This finding opens the discussion of whether IQ scores should be considered when interpreting the results of differences in cognitive performance of patients with epilepsy compared to healthy volunteers. Copyright © 2017 European Paediatric Neurology Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facilitation and Interference in Identification of Pictures and Words

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-10-05

semantic activation and episodic memory encoding. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 88-104. Becker, C. A. (1979). Semantic context...set of items, such as pictures of common objects or known words, which have representations in semantic memory . To test this, we compared the...activation model in particular because nonwords have no memorial representation in semantic memory and thus cannot interfere with ore another. 2. Long-term

Serial-position effects for items and relations in short-term memory.

PubMed

Jones, Tim; Oberauer, Klaus

2013-04-01

Two experiments used immediate probed recall of words to investigate serial-position effects. Item memory was tested through probing with a semantic category. Relation memory was tested through probing with the word's spatial location of presentation. Input order and output order were deconfounded by presenting and probing items in different orders. Primacy and recency effects over input position were found for both item memory and relation memory. Both item and relation memory declined over output position. The finding of a U-shaped input position function for item memory rules out an explanation purely in terms of positional confusions (e.g., edge effects). Either these serial-position effects arise from variations in the intrinsic memory strength of the items, or they arise from variations in the strength of item-position bindings, together with retrieval by scanning.

The neurobiology of the human memory.

PubMed

Fietta, Pierluigi; Fietta, Pieranna

2011-01-01

Memory can be defined as the ability to acquire, process, store, and retrieve information. Memory is indispensable for learning, adaptation, and survival of every living organism. In humans, the remembering process has acquired great flexibility and complexity, reaching close links with other mental functions, such as thinking and emotions. Changes in synaptic connectivity and interactions among multiple neural networks provide the neurobiological substrates for memory encoding, retention, and consolidation. Memory may be categorized as short-term and long-term memory (according to the storage temporal duration), as implicit and explicit memory (with respect to the consciousness of remembering), as declarative (knowing that [fact]) and procedural (knowing how [skill]) memory, or as sensory (echoic, iconic and haptil), semantic, and episodic memory (according to the various remembering domains). Significant advances have been obtained in understanding memory neurobiology, but much remains to be learned in its cognitive, psychological, and phenomenological aspects.

Mathematical Logic in the Human Brain: Semantics

PubMed Central

Friedrich, Roland M.; Friederici, Angela D.

2013-01-01

As a higher cognitive function in humans, mathematics is supported by parietal and prefrontal brain regions. Here, we give an integrative account of the role of the different brain systems in processing the semantics of mathematical logic from the perspective of macroscopic polysynaptic networks. By comparing algebraic and arithmetic expressions of identical underlying structure, we show how the different subparts of a fronto-parietal network are modulated by the semantic domain, over which the mathematical formulae are interpreted. Within this network, the prefrontal cortex represents a system that hosts three major components, namely, control, arithmetic-logic, and short-term memory. This prefrontal system operates on data fed to it by two other systems: a premotor-parietal top-down system that updates and transforms (external) data into an internal format, and a hippocampal bottom-up system that either detects novel information or serves as an access device to memory for previously acquired knowledge. PMID:23301101

Mathematical logic in the human brain: semantics.

PubMed

Friedrich, Roland M; Friederici, Angela D

2013-01-01

As a higher cognitive function in humans, mathematics is supported by parietal and prefrontal brain regions. Here, we give an integrative account of the role of the different brain systems in processing the semantics of mathematical logic from the perspective of macroscopic polysynaptic networks. By comparing algebraic and arithmetic expressions of identical underlying structure, we show how the different subparts of a fronto-parietal network are modulated by the semantic domain, over which the mathematical formulae are interpreted. Within this network, the prefrontal cortex represents a system that hosts three major components, namely, control, arithmetic-logic, and short-term memory. This prefrontal system operates on data fed to it by two other systems: a premotor-parietal top-down system that updates and transforms (external) data into an internal format, and a hippocampal bottom-up system that either detects novel information or serves as an access device to memory for previously acquired knowledge.

Long-term interference at the semantic level: Evidence from blocked-cyclic picture matching.

PubMed

Wei, Tao; Schnur, Tatiana T

2016-01-01

Processing semantically related stimuli creates interference across various domains of cognition, including language and memory. In this study, we identify the locus and mechanism of interference when retrieving meanings associated with words and pictures. Subjects matched a probe stimulus (e.g., cat) to its associated target picture (e.g., yarn) from an array of unrelated pictures. Across trials, probes were either semantically related or unrelated. To test the locus of interference, we presented probes as either words or pictures. If semantic interference occurs at the stage common to both tasks, that is, access to semantic representations, then interference should occur in both probe presentation modalities. Results showed clear semantic interference effects independent of presentation modality and lexical frequency, confirming a semantic locus of interference in comprehension. To test the mechanism of interference, we repeated trials across 4 presentation cycles and manipulated the number of unrelated intervening trials (zero vs. two). We found that semantic interference was additive across cycles and survived 2 intervening trials, demonstrating interference to be long-lasting as opposed to short-lived. However, interference was smaller with zero versus 2 intervening trials, which we interpret to suggest that short-lived facilitation counteracted the long-lived interference. We propose that retrieving meanings associated with words/pictures from the same semantic category yields both interference due to long-lasting changes in connection strength between semantic representations (i.e., incremental learning) and facilitation caused by short-lived residual activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Effect of episodic and working memory impairments on semantic and cognitive procedural learning at alcohol treatment entry.

PubMed

Pitel, Anne Lise; Witkowski, Thomas; Vabret, François; Guillery-Girard, Bérengère; Desgranges, Béatrice; Eustache, Francis; Beaunieux, Hélène

2007-02-01

Chronic alcoholism is known to impair the functioning of episodic and working memory, which may consequently reduce the ability to learn complex novel information. Nevertheless, semantic and cognitive procedural learning have not been properly explored at alcohol treatment entry, despite its potential clinical relevance. The goal of the present study was therefore to determine whether alcoholic patients, immediately after the weaning phase, are cognitively able to acquire complex new knowledge, given their episodic and working memory deficits. Twenty alcoholic inpatients with episodic memory and working memory deficits at alcohol treatment entry and a control group of 20 healthy subjects underwent a protocol of semantic acquisition and cognitive procedural learning. The semantic learning task consisted of the acquisition of 10 novel concepts, while subjects were administered the Tower of Toronto task to measure cognitive procedural learning. Analyses showed that although alcoholic subjects were able to acquire the category and features of the semantic concepts, albeit slowly, they presented impaired label learning. In the control group, executive functions and episodic memory predicted semantic learning in the first and second halves of the protocol, respectively. In addition to the cognitive processes involved in the learning strategies invoked by controls, alcoholic subjects seem to attempt to compensate for their impaired cognitive functions, invoking capacities of short-term passive storage. Regarding cognitive procedural learning, although the patients eventually achieved the same results as the controls, they failed to automate the procedure. Contrary to the control group, the alcoholic groups' learning performance was predicted by controlled cognitive functions throughout the protocol. At alcohol treatment entry, alcoholic patients with neuropsychological deficits have difficulty acquiring novel semantic and cognitive procedural knowledge. Compared with controls, they seem to use more costly learning strategies, which are nonetheless less efficient. These learning disabilities need to be considered when treatment requiring the acquisition of complex novel information is envisaged.

Semantic and Syntactic Interference in Sentence Comprehension: A Comparison of Working Memory Models

PubMed Central

Tan, Yingying; Martin, Randi C.; Van Dyke, Julie A.

2017-01-01

This study investigated the nature of the underlying working memory system supporting sentence processing through examining individual differences in sensitivity to retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Interference effects occur when readers incorrectly retrieve sentence constituents which are similar to those required during integrative processes. We examined interference arising from a partial match between distracting constituents and syntactic and semantic cues, and related these interference effects to performance on working memory, short-term memory (STM), vocabulary, and executive function tasks. For online sentence comprehension, as measured by self-paced reading, the magnitude of individuals' syntactic interference effects was predicted by general WM capacity and the relation remained significant when partialling out vocabulary, indicating that the effects were not due to verbal knowledge. For offline sentence comprehension, as measured by responses to comprehension questions, both general WM capacity and vocabulary knowledge interacted with semantic interference for comprehension accuracy, suggesting that both general WM capacity and the quality of semantic representations played a role in determining how well interference was resolved offline. For comprehension question reaction times, a measure of semantic STM capacity interacted with semantic but not syntactic interference. However, a measure of phonological capacity (digit span) and a general measure of resistance to response interference (Stroop effect) did not predict individuals' interference resolution abilities in either online or offline sentence comprehension. The results are discussed in relation to the multiple capacities account of working memory (e.g., Martin and Romani, 1994; Martin and He, 2004), and the cue-based retrieval parsing approach (e.g., Lewis et al., 2006; Van Dyke et al., 2014). While neither approach was fully supported, a possible means of reconciling the two approaches and directions for future research are proposed. PMID:28261133

Argentines' collective memories of the military Junta of 1976: differences and similarities across generations and ideology.

PubMed

Muller, Felipe; Bermejo, Federico; Hirst, William

2016-08-01

Although memories about a nation's past usually are semantic in nature, a distinction needs to be made between lived and distant semantic collective memories. The former refers to memories of community-relevant events occurring during the lifetime of the rememberer, whereas the latter to memories of distant events. Does the content of lived and distant semantic collective memories differ? Employing both free and cued recall, we examined the memories of younger and older Argentines of the Military Junta of 1976. We also examined the effects of political ideology. Content analysis indicated that (1) lived semantic collective memories were more likely to contain personal recollections than distant semantic collective memories, even though those with distant semantic collective memories could have incorporated memories of the parent's personal experience in their recollections, (2) lived semantic collective memories contained more causal statements, and (3) those on the Right with distant semantic collective memories were more likely to claim that they "Don't know" or offer positive accounts of the Junta, suggesting a need to "defend" the reputation of those on the Right. The results are discussed in terms of the goals and plans different generations might have when recollecting their nation's past.

Temporally graded semantic memory loss in amnesia and semantic dementia: Further evidence for opposite gradients.

PubMed

Estmacott, Robyn W; Moscovitch, Morris

2002-03-01

The consolidation theory of long-term memory (e.g., Squire, 1992) predicts that damage to the medial temporal lobes will result in temporally graded retrograde memory loss, with a disproportionate impairment of recent relative to remote knowledge; in contrast, severe atrophy of the temporal neocortex is predicted to result in the reverse temporally graded pattern, with a selective sparing of recent memory (K.S. Graham & Hodges, 1997). Previously, we reported evidence that autobiographical episodic memory does not follow this temporal pattern (Westmacott, Leach, Freedman, & Moscovitch, 2001). In the present study, we found evidence suggesting that semantic memory loss does follow the predicted temporal pattern. We used a set of tasks that tap implicit and explicit memory for famous names and English vocabulary terms from across the 20th century. KC, a person with medial temporal amnesia, consistently demonstrated across tasks a selective deficit for famous names and vocabulary terms from the 5-year period just prior to injury; this deficit was particularly profound for elaborated semantic knowledge (e.g., word definitions, occupation of famous person). However, when asked to guess on unfamiliar items, KC's performance for names and words from this 5-year time period increased substantially, suggesting that he retains some of this knowledge at an implicit or rudimentary level. Conversely, EL, a semantic dementia patient with temporal neocortical atrophy and relative sparing of the medial temporal lobe, demonstrated a selective sparing of names and words from the most recent time period. However, this selective sparing of recent semantic memory was demonstrated in the implicit tasks only; performance on explicit tasks suggested an equally severe impairment of semantics across all time periods. Unlike the data from our previous study of autobiographical episodic memory, these findings are consistent with the predictions both of consolidation theory (Hodges & Graham, 1998; Squire, 1992) and multiple trace theory (Nadel & Moscovitch, 1999) that the hippocampus plays a timelimited role in the acquisition and representation of long-term semantic memories. Moreover, our findings suggest that tasks requiring minimal verbal production and explicit recall may provide a more sensitive and comprehensive assessment of intact memory capacity in brain-damaged individuals.

The role of cognitive training in the neurorehabilitation of a patient who survived a lightning strike. A case study.

PubMed

Tánczos, Tímea; Zádori, Dénes; Jakab, Katalin; Hnyilicza, Zsuzsanna; Klivényi, Péter; Keresztes, László; Engelhardt, József; Németh, Dezső; Vécsei, László

2014-01-01

Lightning-related injuries most often involve impairment of the functions of the central and peripheral nervous systems, usually including cognitive dysfunctions. We evaluated the cognitive deficit of a patient who had survived a lightning strike and measured the improvement after her cognitive training. This therapeutic method appears to be a powerful tool in the neurorehabilitation treatment. The aim of this case study was to prove the beneficial effects of cognitive training as part of the neurorehabilitation after a lightning strike. Six neuropsychological functions were examined in order to test the cognitive status of the patient before and after the 2-month cognitive training: phonological short-term memory (digit span test and word repetitions test), visuo-spatial short-term memory (Corsi Block Tapping Test), working memory (backward digit span test and listening span test), executive functions (letter and semantic fluencies), language functions (non-word repetition test, Pléh-Palotás-Lörik (PPL) test and sentence repetition test) and episodic memory (Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test and Mini Mental State Examination). We also utilized these tests in aged-matched healthy individuals so as to be able to characterize the domains of the observed improvements more precisely. The patient exhibited a considerable improvement in the backward digit span, semantic fluency, non-word repetition, PPL, sentence repetition and Rivermead Behavioral Memory tests. The cognitive training played an important role in the neurorehabilitation treatment of this lightning injury patient. It considerably improved her quality of life through the functional recovery.

Attending to auditory memory.

PubMed

Zimmermann, Jacqueline F; Moscovitch, Morris; Alain, Claude

2016-06-01

Attention to memory describes the process of attending to memory traces when the object is no longer present. It has been studied primarily for representations of visual stimuli with only few studies examining attention to sound object representations in short-term memory. Here, we review the interplay of attention and auditory memory with an emphasis on 1) attending to auditory memory in the absence of related external stimuli (i.e., reflective attention) and 2) effects of existing memory on guiding attention. Attention to auditory memory is discussed in the context of change deafness, and we argue that failures to detect changes in our auditory environments are most likely the result of a faulty comparison system of incoming and stored information. Also, objects are the primary building blocks of auditory attention, but attention can also be directed to individual features (e.g., pitch). We review short-term and long-term memory guided modulation of attention based on characteristic features, location, and/or semantic properties of auditory objects, and propose that auditory attention to memory pathways emerge after sensory memory. A neural model for auditory attention to memory is developed, which comprises two separate pathways in the parietal cortex, one involved in attention to higher-order features and the other involved in attention to sensory information. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Auditory working memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Episodic Representations Support Early Semantic Learning: Evidence from Midazolam Induced Amnesia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Merritt, Paul; Hirshman, Elliot; Zamani, Shane; Hsu, John; Berrigan, Michael

2006-01-01

Current controversy exists regarding the role of episodic representations in the formation of long-term semantic memories. Using the drug "midazolam" to induce temporary amnesia we tested participants' memories for newly learned facts in a semantic cue condition or an episodic and semantic cue condition. Following midazolam administration, memory…

The (lack of) effect of dynamic visual noise on the concreteness effect in short-term memory.

PubMed

Castellà, Judit; Campoy, Guillermo

2018-05-17

It has been suggested that the concreteness effect in short-term memory (STM) is a consequence of concrete words having more distinctive and richer semantic representations. The generation and storage of visual codes in STM could also play a crucial role on the effect because concrete words are more imaginable than abstract words. If this were the case, the introduction of a visual interference task would be expected to disrupt recall of concrete words. A Dynamic Visual Noise (DVN) display, which has been proven to eliminate the concreteness effect on long-term memory (LTM), was presented along encoding of concrete and abstract words in a STM serial recall task. Results showed a main effect of word type, with more item errors in abstract words, a main effect of DVN, which impaired global performance due to more order errors, but no interaction, suggesting that DVN did not have any impact on the concreteness effect. These findings are discussed in terms of LTM participation through redintegration processes and in terms of the language-based models of verbal STM.

A Diffusion Model Analysis of Adult Age Differences in Episodic and Semantic Long-Term Memory Retrieval

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spaniol, Julia; Madden, David J.; Voss, Andreas

2006-01-01

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in…

Visual Information-Processing in the Perception of Features and Objects

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-01-05

or nodes in a semantic memory network, whereas recall and recognition depend on separate episodic memory traces. In our experiment, we used the same...problem for the account in terms of the separation of episodic from semantic memory , since no pre- existing representations of our line patterns were... semantic memory : amnesic patients were thought to have lost the ability to lay down (or retrieve) episodic traces of autobiographical events, but had

Memory integration in amnesia: prior knowledge supports verbal short-term memory.

PubMed

Race, Elizabeth; Palombo, Daniela J; Cadden, Margaret; Burke, Keely; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-04-01

Short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) have traditionally been considered cognitively distinct. However, it is known that STM can improve when to-be-remembered information appears in contexts that make contact with prior knowledge, suggesting a more interactive relationship between STM and LTM. The current study investigated whether the ability to leverage LTM in support of STM critically depends on the integrity of the hippocampus. Specifically, we investigated whether the hippocampus differentially supports between-domain versus within-domain STM-LTM integration given prior evidence that the representational domain of the elements being integrated in memory is a critical determinant of whether memory performance depends on the hippocampus. In Experiment 1, we investigated hippocampal contributions to within-domain STM-LTM integration by testing whether immediate verbal recall of words improves in MTL amnesic patients when words are presented in familiar verbal contexts (meaningful sentences) compared to unfamiliar verbal contexts (random word lists). Patients demonstrated a robust sentence superiority effect, whereby verbal STM performance improved in familiar compared to unfamiliar verbal contexts, and the magnitude of this effect did not differ from that in controls. In Experiment 2, we investigated hippocampal contributions to between-domain STM-LTM integration by testing whether immediate verbal recall of digits improves in MTL amnesic patients when digits are presented in a familiar visuospatial context (a typical keypad layout) compared to an unfamiliar visuospatial context (a random keypad layout). Immediate verbal recall improved in both patients and controls when digits were presented in the familiar compared to the unfamiliar keypad array, indicating a preserved ability to integrate activated verbal information with stored visuospatial knowledge. Together, these results demonstrate that immediate verbal recall in amnesia can benefit from two distinct types of semantic support, verbal and visuospatial, and that the hippocampus is not critical for leveraging stored semantic knowledge to improve memory performance. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memory integration in amnesia: Prior knowledge supports verbal short-term memory

PubMed Central

Race, Elizabeth; Palombo, Daniela J.; Cadden, Margaret; Burke, Keely; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-01-01

Short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) have traditionally been considered cognitively distinct. However, it is known that STM can improve when to-be-remembered information appears in contexts that make contact with prior knowledge, suggesting a more interactive relationship between STM and LTM. The current study investigated whether the ability to leverage LTM in support of STM critically depends on the integrity of the hippocampus. Specifically, we investigated whether the hippocampus differentially supports between-domain versus within-domain STM–LTM integration given prior evidence that the representational domain of the elements being integrated in memory is a critical determinant of whether memory performance depends on the hippocampus. In Experiment 1, we investigated hippocampal contributions to within-domain STM–LTM integration by testing whether immediate verbal recall of words improves in MTL amnesic patients when words are presented in familiar verbal contexts (meaningful sentences) compared to unfamiliar verbal contexts (random word lists). Patients demonstrated a robust sentence superiority effect, whereby verbal STM performance improved in familiar compared to unfamiliar verbal contexts, and the magnitude of this effect did not differ from that in controls. In Experiment 2, we investigated hippocampal contributions to between-domain STM–LTM integration by testing whether immediate verbal recall of digits improves in MTL amnesic patients when digits are presented in a familiar visuospatial context (a typical keypad layout) compared to an unfamiliar visuospatial context (a random keypad layout). Immediate verbal recall improved in both patients and controls when digits were presented in the familiar compared to the unfamiliar keypad array, indicating a preserved ability to integrate activated verbal information with stored visuospatial knowledge. Together, these results demonstrate that immediate verbal recall in amnesia can benefit from two distinct types of semantic support, verbal and visuospatial, and that the hippocampus is not critical for leveraging stored semantic knowledge to improve memory performance. PMID:25752585

Event-related rTMS at encoding affects differently deep and shallow memory traces.

PubMed

Innocenti, Iglis; Giovannelli, Fabio; Cincotta, Massimo; Feurra, Matteo; Polizzotto, Nicola R; Bianco, Giovanni; Cappa, Stefano F; Rossi, Simone

2010-10-15

The "level of processing" effect is a classical finding of the experimental psychology of memory. Actually, the depth of information processing at encoding predicts the accuracy of the subsequent episodic memory performance. When the incoming stimuli are analyzed in terms of their meaning (semantic, or deep, encoding), the memory performance is superior with respect to the case in which the same stimuli are analyzed in terms of their perceptual features (shallow encoding). As suggested by previous neuroimaging studies and by some preliminary findings with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), the left prefrontal cortex may play a role in semantic processing requiring the allocation of working memory resources. However, it still remains unclear whether deep and shallow encoding share or not the same cortical networks, as well as how these networks contribute to the "level of processing" effect. To investigate the brain areas casually involved in this phenomenon, we applied event-related repetitive TMS (rTMS) during deep (semantic) and shallow (perceptual) encoding of words. Retrieval was subsequently tested without rTMS interference. RTMS applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) abolished the beneficial effect of deep encoding on memory performance, both in terms of accuracy (decrease) and reaction times (increase). Neither accuracy nor reaction times were instead affected by rTMS to the right DLPFC or to an additional control site excluded by the memory process (vertex). The fact that online measures of semantic processing at encoding were unaffected suggests that the detrimental effect on memory performance for semantically encoded items took place in the subsequent consolidation phase. These results highlight the specific causal role of the left DLPFC among the wide left-lateralized cortical network engaged by long-term memory, suggesting that it probably represents a crucial node responsible for the improved memory performance induced by semantic processing. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The construction of meaning.

PubMed

Kintsch, Walter; Mangalath, Praful

2011-04-01

We argue that word meanings are not stored in a mental lexicon but are generated in the context of working memory from long-term memory traces that record our experience with words. Current statistical models of semantics, such as latent semantic analysis and the Topic model, describe what is stored in long-term memory. The CI-2 model describes how this information is used to construct sentence meanings. This model is a dual-memory model, in that it distinguishes between a gist level and an explicit level. It also incorporates syntactic information about how words are used, derived from dependency grammar. The construction of meaning is conceptualized as feature sampling from the explicit memory traces, with the constraint that the sampling must be contextually relevant both semantically and syntactically. Semantic relevance is achieved by sampling topically relevant features; local syntactic constraints as expressed by dependency relations ensure syntactic relevance. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Semantic congruency but not temporal synchrony enhances long-term memory performance for audio-visual scenes.

PubMed

Meyerhoff, Hauke S; Huff, Markus

2016-04-01

Human long-term memory for visual objects and scenes is tremendous. Here, we test how auditory information contributes to long-term memory performance for realistic scenes. In a total of six experiments, we manipulated the presentation modality (auditory, visual, audio-visual) as well as semantic congruency and temporal synchrony between auditory and visual information of brief filmic clips. Our results show that audio-visual clips generally elicit more accurate memory performance than unimodal clips. This advantage even increases with congruent visual and auditory information. However, violations of audio-visual synchrony hardly have any influence on memory performance. Memory performance remained intact even with a sequential presentation of auditory and visual information, but finally declined when the matching tracks of one scene were presented separately with intervening tracks during learning. With respect to memory performance, our results therefore show that audio-visual integration is sensitive to semantic congruency but remarkably robust against asymmetries between different modalities.

Self-referential processing is distinct from semantic elaboration: evidence from long-term memory effects in a patient with amnesia and semantic impairments.

PubMed

Sui, Jie; Humphreys, Glyn W

2013-11-01

We report data demonstrating that self-referential encoding facilitates memory performance in the absence of effects of semantic elaboration in a severely amnesic patient also suffering semantic problems. In Part 1, the patient, GA, was trained to associate items with the self or a familiar other during the encoding phase of a memory task (self-ownership decisions in Experiment 1 and self-evaluation decisions in Experiment 2). Tests of memory showed a consistent self-reference advantage, relative to a condition where the reference was another person in both experiments. The pattern of the self-reference advantage was similar to that in healthy controls. In Part 2 we demonstrate that GA showed minimal effects of semantic elaboration on memory for items he semantically classified, compared with items subject to physical size decisions; in contrast, healthy controls demonstrated enhanced memory performance after semantic relative to physical encoding. The results indicate that self-referential encoding, not semantic elaboration, improves memory in amnesia. Self-referential processing may provide a unique scaffold to help improve learning in amnesic cases. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Familiar Pattern? Semantic Memory Contributes to the Enhancement of Visuo-Spatial Memories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riby, Leigh M.; Orme, Elizabeth

2013-01-01

In this study we quantify for the first time electrophysiological components associated with incorporating long-term semantic knowledge with visuo-spatial information using two variants of a traditional matrix patterns task. Results indicated that the matrix task with greater semantic content was associated with enhanced accuracy and RTs in a…

Short-term Action Intentions Overrule Long-Term Semantic Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Elk, M.; van Schie, H.T.; Bekkering, H.

2009-01-01

In the present study, we investigated whether the preparation of an unusual action with an object (e.g. bringing a cup towards the eye) could selectively overrule long-term semantic representations. In the first experiment it was found that unusual action intentions activated short-term semantic goal representations, rather than long-term…

Working Memory Is Partially Preserved during Sleep

PubMed Central

Daltrozzo, Jérôme; Claude, Léa; Tillmann, Barbara; Bastuji, Hélène; Perrin, Fabien

2012-01-01

Although several cognitive processes, including speech processing, have been studied during sleep, working memory (WM) has never been explored up to now. Our study assessed the capacity of WM by testing speech perception when the level of background noise and the sentential semantic length (SSL) (amount of semantic information required to perceive the incongruence of a sentence) were modulated. Speech perception was explored with the N400 component of the event-related potentials recorded to sentence final words (50% semantically congruent with the sentence, 50% semantically incongruent). During sleep stage 2 and paradoxical sleep: (1) without noise, a larger N400 was observed for (short and long SSL) sentences ending with a semantically incongruent word compared to a congruent word (i.e. an N400 effect); (2) with moderate noise, the N400 effect (observed at wake with short and long SSL sentences) was attenuated for long SSL sentences. Our results suggest that WM for linguistic information is partially preserved during sleep with a smaller capacity compared to wake. PMID:23236418

Working memory is partially preserved during sleep.

PubMed

Daltrozzo, Jérôme; Claude, Léa; Tillmann, Barbara; Bastuji, Hélène; Perrin, Fabien

2012-01-01

Although several cognitive processes, including speech processing, have been studied during sleep, working memory (WM) has never been explored up to now. Our study assessed the capacity of WM by testing speech perception when the level of background noise and the sentential semantic length (SSL) (amount of semantic information required to perceive the incongruence of a sentence) were modulated. Speech perception was explored with the N400 component of the event-related potentials recorded to sentence final words (50% semantically congruent with the sentence, 50% semantically incongruent). During sleep stage 2 and paradoxical sleep: (1) without noise, a larger N400 was observed for (short and long SSL) sentences ending with a semantically incongruent word compared to a congruent word (i.e. an N400 effect); (2) with moderate noise, the N400 effect (observed at wake with short and long SSL sentences) was attenuated for long SSL sentences. Our results suggest that WM for linguistic information is partially preserved during sleep with a smaller capacity compared to wake.

Differences in Processing of Taxonomic and Sequential Relations in Semantic Memory: An fMRI Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuchinke, Lars; van der Meer, Elke; Krueger, Frank

2009-01-01

Conceptual knowledge of our world is represented in semantic memory in terms of concepts and semantic relations between concepts. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the cortical regions underlying the processing of sequential and taxonomic relations. Participants were presented verbal cues and performed three tasks:…

Association of KIBRA and memory.

PubMed

Bates, Timothy C; Price, Jackie F; Harris, Sarah E; Marioni, Riccardo E; Fowkes, F Gerry R; Stewart, Marlene C; Murray, Gordon D; Whalley, Lawrence J; Starr, John M; Deary, Ian J

2009-07-24

We report on the association of KIBRA with memory in two samples of older individuals assessed on either memory for semantically unrelated word stimuli (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, n=2091), or a measure of semantically related material (the WAIS Logical Memory Test of prose-passage recall, n=542). SNP rs17070145 was associated with delayed recall of semantically unrelated items, but not with immediate recall for these stimuli, nor with either immediate or delayed recall for semantically related material. The pattern of results suggests a role for the T-->C substitution in intron 9 of KIBRA in a component of episodic memory involved in long-term storage but independent of processes shared with immediate recall such as rehearsal involved in acquisition and rehearsal or processes.

Discriminant cognitive factors in responder and non-responder patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Stip, E; Lussier, I; Ngan, E; Mendrek, A; Liddle, P

1999-12-01

To identify which improvements in cognitive function are associated with symptom resolution in schizophrenic patients treated with atypical antipsychotics. a prospective open trial with atypical neuroleptics (risperidone, clozapine, quetiapine). Inpatient and outpatient units, Institute of Psychiatry. Thirty-nine patients with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV criteria were included. Clinical and cognitive assessment were done at baseline (T0) and again after six months of treatment (T2). Twenty-five patients completed the trial. New-generation antipsychotics during six months. Patients were considered as responders if their PANSS score decreased at least 20% (n = 15) and non-responders if it did not (n = 10). a computerized cognitive assessment comprised tests of short-term-memory (digit span), explicit long-term memory (word pair learning), divided attention, selective attention and verbal fluency (orthographic and semantic). Clinical assessment included PANSS and ESRS. A discriminant function analysis was performed to determine which changes in cognitive performance predicted symptomatic response status. Semantic fluency and orthographic fluency were significant predictors. Together they correctly predicted responder status in 88% of cases. Memory was not a significant predictor of symptomatic response. Verbal fluency discriminated the responder from the non-responder group during a pharmacological treatment.

Verbal short-term memory in Down's syndrome: an articulatory loop deficit?

PubMed

Vicari, S; Marotta, L; Carlesimo, G A

2004-02-01

Verbal short-term memory, as measured by digit or word span, is generally impaired in individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) compared to mental age-matched controls. Moving from the working memory model, the present authors investigated the hypothesis that impairment in some of the articulatory loop sub-components is at the base of the deficient maintenance and recall of phonological representations in individuals with DS. Two experiments were carried out in a group of adolescents with DS and in typically developing children matched for mental age. In the first experiment, the authors explored the reliance of these subjects on the subvocal rehearsal mechanism during a word-span task and the effects produced by varying the frequency of occurrence of the words on the extension of the word span. In the second experiment, they investigated the functioning of the phonological store component of the articulatory loop in more detail. A reduced verbal span in DS was confirmed. Neither individuals with DS nor controls engaged in spontaneous subvocal rehearsal. Moreover, the data provide little support for defective functioning of the phonological store in DS. No evidence was found suggesting that a dysfunction of the articulatory loop and lexical-semantic competence significantly contributed to verbal span reduction in subjects with DS. Alternative explanations of defective verbal short-term memory in DS, such as a central executive system impairment, must be considered.

The role of working memory and divided attention in metaphor interpretation.

PubMed

Iskandar, Sam; Baird, Anne D

2014-10-01

Although several types of figurative language exist, neuropsychological tests of non-literal language have focused on proverbs. Metaphors in the form X is (a) Y (e.g., The body's immunological response is a battle against disease.) place a lower demand on language skills and are more easily manipulated for novelty than proverbs. Forty healthy participants completed the Metaphor Interpretation Test (developed by the authors). The task includes 20 items chosen from a list of metaphors that were rated on several scales (e.g. imagery, aptness) in a study by Katz et al. (Metaphor Symb Act 3(4):191-214, 1988). Participants were asked to rate the familiarity and provide an explanation of each metaphor. A scoring system was developed to categorize answers into: abstract complete (AC), abstract partial (AP), concrete (CT), and other/unrelated (OT) types. Participants also completed short-term memory and divided attention tests. Overall, participants produced 56 % AC, 25.38 % AP, 7.88 % CT, and 10.88 % OT responses. It was found that a measure of verbal short-term memory span was the best predictor of performance on this task (adjusted R(2) = .369). It appears that short-term memory span, not working memory or divided attention, contributes most to providing abstract responses in explaining metaphors. This is in line with the idea that when one accesses the semantic network associated with a novel metaphor, one must hold this information in mind long enough to search for and link similar cognitive networks.

A predictive framework for evaluating models of semantic organization in free recall

PubMed Central

Morton, Neal W; Polyn, Sean M.

2016-01-01

Research in free recall has demonstrated that semantic associations reliably influence the organization of search through episodic memory. However, the specific structure of these associations and the mechanisms by which they influence memory search remain unclear. We introduce a likelihood-based model-comparison technique, which embeds a model of semantic structure within the context maintenance and retrieval (CMR) model of human memory search. Within this framework, model variants are evaluated in terms of their ability to predict the specific sequence in which items are recalled. We compare three models of semantic structure, latent semantic analysis (LSA), global vectors (GloVe), and word association spaces (WAS), and find that models using WAS have the greatest predictive power. Furthermore, we find evidence that semantic and temporal organization is driven by distinct item and context cues, rather than a single context cue. This finding provides important constraint for theories of memory search. PMID:28331243

The structure of semantic person memory: evidence from semantic priming in person recognition.

PubMed

Wiese, Holger

2011-11-01

This paper reviews research on the structure of semantic person memory as examined with semantic priming. In this experimental paradigm, a familiarity decision on a target face or written name is usually faster when it is preceded by a related as compared to an unrelated prime. This effect has been shown to be relatively short lived and susceptible to interfering items. Moreover, semantic priming can cross stimulus domains, such that a written name can prime a target face and vice versa. However, it remains controversial whether representations of people are stored in associative networks based on co-occurrence, or in more abstract semantic categories. In line with prominent cognitive models of face recognition, which explain semantic priming by shared semantic information between prime and target, recent research demonstrated that priming could be obtained from purely categorically related, non-associated prime/target pairs. Although strategic processes, such as expectancy and retrospective matching likely contribute, there is also evidence for a non-strategic contribution to priming, presumably related to spreading activation. Finally, a semantic priming effect has been demonstrated in the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, which may reflect facilitated access to semantic information. It is concluded that categorical relatedness is one organizing principle of semantic person memory. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

Semantic dementia Brazilian study of nineteen cases

PubMed Central

Senaha, Mirna Lie Hosogi; Caramelli, Paulo; Porto, Claudia Sellitto; Nitrini, Ricardo

2007-01-01

The term semantic dementia was devised by Snowden et al. in 1989 and nowadays, the semantic dementia syndrome is recognized as one of the clinical forms of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and is characterized by a language semantic disturbance associated to non-verbal semantic memory impairment. Objectives The aim of this study was to describe a Brazilian sample of 19 semantic dementia cases, emphasizing the clinical characteristics important for differential diagnosis of this syndrome. Methods Nineteen cases with semantic dementia were evaluated between 1999 and 2007. All patients were submitted to neurological evaluation, neuroimaging exams and cognitive, language and semantic memory evaluation. Results All patients presented fluent spontaneous speech, preservation of syntactic and phonological aspects of the language, word-finding difficulty, semantic paraphasias, word comprehension impairment, low performance in visual confrontation naming tasks, impairment on tests of non-verbal semantic memory and preservation of autobiographical memory and visuospatial skills. Regarding radiological investigations, temporal lobe atrophy and/or hypoperfusion were found in all patients. Conclusions The cognitive, linguistic and of neuroimaging data in our case series corroborate other studies showing that semantic dementia constitutes a syndrome with well defined clinical characteristics associated to temporal lobe atrophy. PMID:29213413

Generalized dissociative amnesia: episodic, semantic and procedural memories lost and found.

PubMed

van der Hart, O; Nijenhuis, E

2001-10-01

This review tests Ribot's classic twofold categorization of generalized amnesia (GA) into Type I, total loss of episodic memory, and Type II, additional more or less extensive loss of semantic and/or procedural memory. It also explores his law of regression, according to which, cast in modern terms, recovery of lost procedural and semantic memories precedes recovery of episodic memory, as well as reported aetiological factors. Clinically and formally assessed cases of GA, published since 1845, were surveyed and further analysed. Over and above authentic episodic memory loss, cases differed widely in the extent of impairment of semantic and procedural memory. Recovery of semantic and procedural memory often preceded recovery of episodic memory. This particularly applied to authenticated trauma memories. To an extent, lost memories affected current functioning, and in some cases were associated with alternating dissociative personalities. Severe memory distortions upon memory recovery were not reported. Most cases were trauma or stress related, while in some cases the aetiology remained unknown. Contrary to the view expressed in DSM-IV, which states that dissociative amnesia pertains to an inability to recall personal information, GA may also involve loss and recovery of semantic and procedural memories. Since the loss of various memory types in GA is dimensional rather than categorical, Ribot's typological distinction does not hold. Some of the reviewed cases suggest a trauma-related aetiology. Generalized amnesia of varying degrees of severity can involve delayed retrieval of trauma memories, as well as the loss and delayed retrieval of the premorbid personality.

A critical evaluation of monkey models of amnesia and dementia.

PubMed

Ridley, R M; Baker, H F

1991-01-01

In this review we consider various models of amnesia and dementia in monkeys and examine the validity of such models. In Section 2 we describe the various types of memory tests (tasks) available for use with monkeys and discuss the extent to which these tasks assess different facets of memory according to present theories of human memory. We argue that the rules which govern correct task performance are best regarded as a form of semantic rather than procedural memory, and that when information about stimulus attributes or reward associations is stored long-term then that knowledge is semantic. The demonstration of episodic memory in monkeys is problematic and the term recognition memory has been used too loosely. In particular, it is difficult to dissociate episodic memory for stimulus events from the use of semantic memory for the rule of the task, since dysfunction of either can produce impairment on performance of the same task. Tasks can also be divided into those which assess memory for stimulus-reward associations (evaluative memory) and those which tax stimulus-response associations including spatial and conditional responding (non-evaluative memory). This dissociation cuts across the distinction between semantic and episodic memory. In Section 3 we examine the usefulness of the classification of tasks described in Section 2 in clarifying our understanding of the contribution of the temporal lobes and the cholinergic system to memory. We conclude that evaluative and non-evaluative memory are mediated by separate parallel systems involving the amygdala and hippocampus, respectively.

Long-term memory following transient global amnesia: an investigation of episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Guillery-Girard, B; Quinette, P; Desgranges, B; Piolino, P; Viader, F; de la Sayette, V; Eustache, F

2006-11-01

Several studies noted persistence of memory impairment following an episode of transient global amnesia (TGA) with standard tests. To specify long-term memory impairments in a group of patients selected with stringent criteria. Both retrograde and anterograde memory were investigated in 32 patients 13-67 months after a TGA episode with original tasks encompassing retrograde semantic memory (academic, public and personal knowledge), retrograde episodic memory (autobiographical events) and anterograde episodic memory. Patients had preserved academic and public knowledge. Pathological scores were obtained in personal verbal fluency for the two most recent periods, and patients produced less autobiographical events than controls. However, when they were provided time to detail, memories were as episodic as in controls regardless of their remoteness. Anterograde episodic tasks revealed a mild but significant impairment of the capacity of re-living the condition of encoding, i.e. the moment at which words were presented. Patients who have suffered from an episode of TGA manifest deficits of memory focused on the retrieval of both recent semantic information and episodic memories and especially the capacity of re-living. These deficits may not result from a deterioration of memory per se but rather from difficulties in accessing memories.

Functional neuroanatomy of remote episodic, semantic and spatial memory: a unified account based on multiple trace theory

PubMed Central

Moscovitch, Morris; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Gilboa, Asaf; Addis, Donna Rose; Westmacott, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; McAndrews, Mary Pat; Levine, Brian; Black, Sandra; Winocur, Gordon; Nadel, Lynn

2005-01-01

We review lesion and neuroimaging evidence on the role of the hippocampus, and other structures, in retention and retrieval of recent and remote memories. We examine episodic, semantic and spatial memory, and show that important distinctions exist among different types of these memories and the structures that mediate them. We argue that retention and retrieval of detailed, vivid autobiographical memories depend on the hippocampal system no matter how long ago they were acquired. Semantic memories, on the other hand, benefit from hippocampal contribution for some time before they can be retrieved independently of the hippocampus. Even semantic memories, however, can have episodic elements associated with them that continue to depend on the hippocampus. Likewise, we distinguish between experientially detailed spatial memories (akin to episodic memory) and more schematic memories (akin to semantic memory) that are sufficient for navigation but not for re-experiencing the environment in which they were acquired. Like their episodic and semantic counterparts, the former type of spatial memory is dependent on the hippocampus no matter how long ago it was acquired, whereas the latter can survive independently of the hippocampus and is represented in extra-hippocampal structures. In short, the evidence reviewed suggests strongly that the function of the hippocampus (and possibly that of related limbic structures) is to help encode, retain, and retrieve experiences, no matter how long ago the events comprising the experience occurred, and no matter whether the memories are episodic or spatial. We conclude that the evidence favours a multiple trace theory (MTT) of memory over two other models: (1) traditional consolidation models which posit that the hippocampus is a time-limited memory structure for all forms of memory; and (2) versions of cognitive map theory which posit that the hippocampus is needed for representing all forms of allocentric space in memory. PMID:16011544

Functional neuroanatomy of remote episodic, semantic and spatial memory: a unified account based on multiple trace theory.

PubMed

Moscovitch, Morris; Rosenbaum, R Shayna; Gilboa, Asaf; Addis, Donna Rose; Westmacott, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; McAndrews, Mary Pat; Levine, Brian; Black, Sandra; Winocur, Gordon; Nadel, Lynn

2005-07-01

We review lesion and neuroimaging evidence on the role of the hippocampus, and other structures, in retention and retrieval of recent and remote memories. We examine episodic, semantic and spatial memory, and show that important distinctions exist among different types of these memories and the structures that mediate them. We argue that retention and retrieval of detailed, vivid autobiographical memories depend on the hippocampal system no matter how long ago they were acquired. Semantic memories, on the other hand, benefit from hippocampal contribution for some time before they can be retrieved independently of the hippocampus. Even semantic memories, however, can have episodic elements associated with them that continue to depend on the hippocampus. Likewise, we distinguish between experientially detailed spatial memories (akin to episodic memory) and more schematic memories (akin to semantic memory) that are sufficient for navigation but not for re-experiencing the environment in which they were acquired. Like their episodic and semantic counterparts, the former type of spatial memory is dependent on the hippocampus no matter how long ago it was acquired, whereas the latter can survive independently of the hippocampus and is represented in extra-hippocampal structures. In short, the evidence reviewed suggests strongly that the function of the hippocampus (and possibly that of related limbic structures) is to help encode, retain, and retrieve experiences, no matter how long ago the events comprising the experience occurred, and no matter whether the memories are episodic or spatial. We conclude that the evidence favours a multiple trace theory (MTT) of memory over two other models: (1) traditional consolidation models which posit that the hippocampus is a time-limited memory structure for all forms of memory; and (2) versions of cognitive map theory which posit that the hippocampus is needed for representing all forms of allocentric space in memory.

A Long-Term Retention Advantage for Spatial Information Learned Naturally and in the Laboratory

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-06-09

study. Memory & Cognition, 10, 324-332. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory . In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of memory ...the cognitive research literature. Some of the better known divisions include the distinction between semantic , episodic and procedural knowledge...the probe method by being more structured and more focused on specific memory episodes . In general, questionnaire studies simply involve formulating

Brief, pre-learning stress reduces false memory production and enhances true memory selectively in females.

PubMed

Zoladz, Phillip R; Peters, David M; Kalchik, Andrea E; Hoffman, Mackenzie M; Aufdenkampe, Rachael L; Woelke, Sarah A; Wolters, Nicholas E; Talbot, Jeffery N

2014-04-10

Some of the previous research on stress-memory interactions has suggested that stress increases the production of false memories. However, as accumulating work has shown that the effects of stress on learning and memory depend critically on the timing of the stressor, we hypothesized that brief stress administered immediately before learning would reduce, rather than increase, false memory production. In the present study, participants submerged their dominant hand in a bath of ice cold water (stress) or sat quietly (no stress) for 3 min. Then, participants completed a short-term memory task, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, in which they were presented with 10 different lists of semantically related words (e.g., candy, sour, sugar) and, after each list, were tested for their memory of presented words (e.g., candy), non-presented unrelated "distractor" words (e.g., hat), and non-presented semantically related "critical lure" words (e.g., sweet). Stress, overall, significantly reduced the number of critical lures recalled (i.e., false memory) by participants. In addition, stress enhanced memory for the presented words (i.e., true memory) in female, but not male, participants. These findings reveal that stress does not unequivocally enhance false memory production and that the timing of the stressor is an important variable that could mediate such effects. Such results could have important implications for understanding the dependability of eyewitness accounts of events that are observed following stress. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Skilled memory in expert figure skaters.

PubMed

Deakin, J M; Allard, F

1991-01-01

The present studies extend skilled-memory theory to a domain involving the performance of motor sequences. Skilled figure skaters were better able than their less skilled counterparts to perform short skating sequences that were choreographed, rather than randomly constructed. Expert skaters encoded sequences for performance very differently from the way in which they encoded sequences that were verbally presented for verbal recall. Tasks interpolated between sequence and recall showed no significant influence on recall accuracy, implicating long-term memory in skating memory. There was little evidence for the use of retrieval structures when skaters learned the brief sequences used throughout these studies. Finally, expert skaters were able to judge the similarity of two skating elements faster than less skilled skaters, indicating a faster access to semantic memory for experts. The data indicate that skaters show many of the same skilled-memory characteristics as have been described in other skill domains involving memorization, such as digit span and memory for dinner orders.

Long-term semantic representations moderate the effect of attentional refreshing on episodic memory.

PubMed

Loaiza, Vanessa M; Duperreault, Kayla A; Rhodes, Matthew G; McCabe, David P

2015-02-01

The McCabe effect (McCabe, Journal of Memory and Language 58:480-494, 2008) refers to an advantage in episodic memory (EM) retrieval for memoranda studied in complex span versus simple span tasks, particularly for memoranda presented in earlier serial positions. This finding has been attributed to the necessity to refresh memoranda during complex span tasks that, in turn, promotes content-context binding in working memory (WM). Several frameworks have conceptualized WM as being embedded in long-term memory. Thus, refreshing may be less efficient when memoranda are not well-established in long-term semantic memory (SM). To investigate this, we presented words and nonwords in simple and complex span trials in order to manipulate the long-term semantic representations of the memoranda with the requirement to refresh the memoranda during WM. A recognition test was administered that required participants to make a remember-know decision for each memorandum recognized as old. The results replicated the McCabe effect, but only for words, and the beneficial effect of refreshing opportunities was exclusive to recollection. These results extend previous research by indicating that the predictive relationship between WM refreshing and long-term EM is specific to recollection and, furthermore, moderated by representations in long-term SM. This supports the predictions of WM frameworks that espouse the importance of refreshing in content-context binding, but also those that view WM as being an activated subset of and, therefore, constrained by the contents of long-term memory.

Working Memory and the Revision of Syntactic and Discourse Ambiguities

PubMed Central

Evans, William S.; Caplan, David; Ostrowski, Adam; Michaud, Jennifer; Guarino, Anthony; Waters, Gloria

2015-01-01

Two hundred participants, 50 in each of four age ranges (19 – 29; 30 – 49, 50 – 69, 70 – 90) were tested for short term working memory, speed of processing and on-line processing of three types of sentences in which an initially assigned syntactic structure and/or semantic interpretation had to be revised. Self-paced reading times were longer for the segments which signaled the need for revision, and there were interactions of age and sentence type and of speed of processing and sentence type, but not of working memory and sentence type, on reading times for these segments. The results provide evidence that working memory does not support the processes that revise the structure and interpretation of sentences and discourse. PMID:25485458

Retrieval and Monitoring Processes during Visual Working Memory: An ERP Study of the Benefit of Visual Semantics

PubMed Central

Orme, Elizabeth; Brown, Louise A.; Riby, Leigh M.

2017-01-01

In this study, we examined electrophysiological indices of episodic remembering whilst participants recalled novel shapes, with and without semantic content, within a visual working memory paradigm. The components of interest were the parietal episodic (PE; 400–800 ms) and late posterior negativity (LPN; 500–900 ms), as these have previously been identified as reliable markers of recollection and post-retrieval monitoring, respectively. Fifteen young adults completed a visual matrix patterns task, assessing memory for low and high semantic visual representations. Matrices with either low semantic or high semantic content (containing familiar visual forms) were briefly presented to participants for study (1500 ms), followed by a retention interval (6000 ms) and finally a same/different recognition phase. The event-related potentials of interest were tracked from the onset of the recognition test stimuli. Analyses revealed equivalent amplitude for the earlier PE effect for the processing of both low and high semantic stimulus types. However, the LPN was more negative-going for the processing of the low semantic stimuli. These data are discussed in terms of relatively ‘pure’ and complete retrieval of high semantic items, where support can readily be recruited from semantic memory. However, for the low semantic items additional executive resources, as indexed by the LPN, are recruited when memory monitoring and uncertainty exist in order to recall previously studied items more effectively. PMID:28725203

Retrieval and Monitoring Processes during Visual Working Memory: An ERP Study of the Benefit of Visual Semantics.

PubMed

Orme, Elizabeth; Brown, Louise A; Riby, Leigh M

2017-01-01

In this study, we examined electrophysiological indices of episodic remembering whilst participants recalled novel shapes, with and without semantic content, within a visual working memory paradigm. The components of interest were the parietal episodic (PE; 400-800 ms) and late posterior negativity (LPN; 500-900 ms), as these have previously been identified as reliable markers of recollection and post-retrieval monitoring, respectively. Fifteen young adults completed a visual matrix patterns task, assessing memory for low and high semantic visual representations. Matrices with either low semantic or high semantic content (containing familiar visual forms) were briefly presented to participants for study (1500 ms), followed by a retention interval (6000 ms) and finally a same/different recognition phase. The event-related potentials of interest were tracked from the onset of the recognition test stimuli. Analyses revealed equivalent amplitude for the earlier PE effect for the processing of both low and high semantic stimulus types. However, the LPN was more negative-going for the processing of the low semantic stimuli. These data are discussed in terms of relatively 'pure' and complete retrieval of high semantic items, where support can readily be recruited from semantic memory. However, for the low semantic items additional executive resources, as indexed by the LPN, are recruited when memory monitoring and uncertainty exist in order to recall previously studied items more effectively.

Why do Alzheimer patients have difficulty with pronouns? Working memory, semantics, and reference in comprehension and production in Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Almor, A; Kempler, D; MacDonald, M C; Andersen, E S; Tyler, L K

1999-05-01

Three experiments investigated the extent to which semantic and working-memory deficits contribute to Alzheimer patients' impairments in producing and comprehending referring expressions. In Experiment 1, the spontaneous speech of 11 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) contained a greater ratio of pronouns to full noun phrases than did the spontaneous speech produced by 9 healthy controls. Experiments 2 and 3 used a cross-modal naming methodology to compare reference comprehension in another group of 10 patients and 10 age-matched controls. In Experiment 2, patients were less sensitive than healthy controls to the grammatical information necessary for processing pronouns. In Experiment 3, patients were better able to remember referent information in short paragraphs when reference was maintained with full noun phrases rather than pronouns, but healthy controls showed the reverse pattern. Performance in all three experiments was linked to working memory performance but not to word finding difficulty. We discuss these findings in terms of a theory of reference processing, the Informational Load Hypothesis, which views referential impairments in AD as the consequence of normal discourse processing in the context of a working memory impairment. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

Human hippocampus associates information in memory

PubMed Central

Henke, Katharina; Weber, Bruno; Kneifel, Stefan; Wieser, Heinz Gregor; Buck, Alfred

1999-01-01

The hippocampal formation, one of the most complex and vulnerable brain structures, is recognized as a crucial brain area subserving human long-term memory. Yet, its specific functions in memory are controversial. Recent experimental results suggest that the hippocampal contribution to human memory is limited to episodic memory, novelty detection, semantic (deep) processing of information, and spatial memory. We measured the regional cerebral blood flow by positron-emission tomography while healthy volunteers learned pairs of words with different learning strategies. These led to different forms of learning, allowing us to test the degree to which they challenge hippocampal function. Neither novelty detection nor depth of processing activated the hippocampal formation as much as semantically associating the primarily unrelated words in memory. This is compelling evidence for another function of the human hippocampal formation in memory: establishing semantic associations. PMID:10318979

The N400 reveals how personal semantics is processed: Insights into the nature and organization of self-knowledge

PubMed Central

Federmeier, Kara D.

2017-01-01

There is growing recognition that some important forms of long-term memory are difficult to classify into one of the well-studied memory subtypes. One example is personal semantics. Like the episodes that are stored as part of one’s autobiography, personal semantics is linked to an individual, yet, like general semantic memory, it is detached from a specific encoding context. Access to general semantics elicits an electrophysiological response known as the N400, which has been characterized across three decades of research; surprisingly, this response has not been fully examined in the context of personal semantics. In this study, we assessed responses to congruent and incongruent statements about people’s own, personal preferences. We found that access to personal preferences elicited N400 responses, with congruency effects that were similar in latency and distribution to those for general semantic statements elicited from the same participants. These results suggest that the processing of personal and general semantics share important functional and neurobiological features. PMID:26825011

Clues for minimal hepatic encephalopathy in children with noncirrhotic portal hypertension.

PubMed

D'Antiga, Lorenzo; Dacchille, Patrizia; Boniver, Clementina; Poledri, Sara; Schiff, Sami; Zancan, Lucia; Amodio, Piero

2014-12-01

In children with noncirrhotic extrahepatic portal vein obstruction (EHPVO), minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE) was reported in a few series, but neither is it routinely investigated nor does consensus about its diagnosis exist. In this prospective observational study we aimed at detecting the prevalence of MHE in children with EHPVO and providing a practical diagnostic protocol. A consecutive sample of 13 noncirrhotic children (age range 4-18 years) with EHPVO underwent a screening for MHE based on level of fasting ammonia, quantified electroencephalogram (EEG) evaluation, and a wide battery of 26 psychometric tests exploring learning ability, abstract reasoning, phonemic and semantic fluency, selective attention, executive functions, short-term verbal and visual memory, long-term verbal memory, and visuopractic ability. Five children had at least 2 altered psychometric tests. Selective attention, executive function, and short-term visual memory were the domains more frequently altered, and 4 tests were enough to detect 80% of these children. Fasting ammonia plasma level was increased in 6 children. EEG mean dominant frequency adjusted for age was associated with serum ammonia concentration (β = -0.44 ± 0.19, P < 0.05). As a whole, children with EHPVO showed trends for lower α (median 41% vs 49%) and higher θ power than controls (median 41% vs 49% and 29% vs 20%, respectively). MHE affects approximately 50% of children with EHPVO and, therefore, is worthwhile to be investigated. Three simple tools, serum ammonia, quantified EEG, and neuropsychological examination, focused on selective attention, executive function, and short-term visual memory can be used effectively in the evaluation of MHE in this setting.

Proactive interference and cuing effects in short-term cued recall: does foil context matter?

PubMed

Goh, Winston D; Tan, Huiqin

2006-07-01

Tehan and Humphreys's (1995, 1996) short-term cued recall paradigm showed that recall in short-term memory is cue driven. In critical trials, the participants studied two blocks of four words each and were required to forget the first block while remembering the second block. A foil in the first block (e.g., orange) was related to a target (e.g., carrot) in the second block. Proactive interference (PI) was evident when a retrieval cue was used that subsumed the foil and the target (e.g., type of juice), but not when a cue was used that subsumed only the target (e.g., type of vegetable). Four experiments were performed to examine the extent to which contextual organization in the foil block would enhance or diminish the foil's efficacy in creating PI. A novel condition was included in which the words in the foil block were studied in a phonologically related context but the target was cued semantically, and vice versa with a semantic context and phonological cue. There were no differences in recall accuracy between conditions with and without contextual organization, but reliable increases in foil intrusions were observed when contextual organization was present. Contextual organization enhanced the foil, rather than diminished it, but the strengthened foil generated PI only when the cue subsumed the foil and the target and had no effect when the cue subsumed only the target. The results are consistent with a cue-driven retrieval interpretation of short-term recall.

[Memory and brain--neurobiological correlates of memory disturbances].

PubMed

Calabrese, P; Markowitsch, H J

2003-04-01

A differentiation of memory is possible on the basis of chronological and contents-related aspects. Furthermore, it is possible to make process-specific subdivisions (encoding, transfer, consolidation, retrieval). The time-related division on the one hand refers to the general differentiation into short-term and long-term memory, and, on the other, to that between anterograde and retrograde memory ("new" and "old memory"; measured from a given time point, usually that when brain damage occurred). Anterograde memory means the successful encoding and storing of new information; retrograde the ability to retrieve successfully acquired and/or stored information. On the contents-based level, memory can be divided into five basic long-term systems--episodic memory, the knowledge system, perceptual, procedural and the priming form of memory. Neural correlates for these divisions are discussed with special emphasis of the episodic and the knowledge systems, based both on normal individuals and brain-damaged subjects. It is argued that structures of the limbic system are important for encoding of information and for its transfer into long-term memory. For this, two independent, but interacting memory circuits are proposed--one of them controlling and integrating primarily the emotional, and the other primarily the cognitive components of newly incoming information. For information storage principally neocortical structures are regarded as important and for the recall of information from the episodic and semantic memory systems the combined action of portions of prefrontal and anterior temporal regions is regarded as essential. Within this fronto-temporal agglomerate, a moderate hemispheric-specificity is assumed to exist with the right-hemispheric combination being mainly engaged in episodic memory retrieval and the left-hemispheric in that of semantic information. Evidence for this specialization comes from the results from focally brain-damaged patients as well as from that functional brain imaging in normal human subjects. Comparing results from imaging studies in memory disturbed patients with brain damage and from patients with a psychiatric diagnosis (e. g., psychogenic amnesia) revealed that both patient groups demonstrate comparable metabolic changes on the brain level. It can therefore be concluded that in neurological patients distinct, identifiable tissue damage is existent, while in psychiatric patients changes in the brain's biochemistry (release of stress hormones, and transmitters) constitute the physiological bases for the memory disturbances.

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.

Contextual priming in semantic anomia: a case study.

PubMed

Renvall, Kati; Laine, Matti; Martin, Nadine

2005-11-01

The present case continues the series of anomia treatment studies with contextual priming (CP), being the second in-depth treatment study conducted for an individual suffering from semantically based anomia. Our aim was to acquire further evidence of the facilitation and interference effects of the CP treatment on semantic anomia. Based on the results of the study of , our hypothesis before the treatment was that our participant would show short-term interference and at most modest and short-term benefit from treatment. To acquire such evidence would not only be important for the choice of anomia treatment methods in individual patients, but would also prompt further development of the CP method. The CP technique used for our participant included cycles of repeating and naming items in three contextual conditions (semantic, phonological, and unrelated). As predicted, the overall improvement of naming was modest and short-term. Interestingly, the contextual condition that corresponded with the nature of our patient's underlying naming deficit (semantic) elicited immediate interference in the form of contextual naming errors, as well as short-term improvement of naming. Based on this and a recent study by , it appears that despite short-term positive effects, in its current form the CP treatment is not sufficient for those aphasics who have a semantic deficit underlying their anomia. The possible mechanism and directions for future research are discussed.

A familiar pattern? Semantic memory contributes to the enhancement of visuo-spatial memories.

PubMed

Riby, Leigh M; Orme, Elizabeth

2013-03-01

In this study we quantify for the first time electrophysiological components associated with incorporating long-term semantic knowledge with visuo-spatial information using two variants of a traditional matrix patterns task. Results indicated that the matrix task with greater semantic content was associated with enhanced accuracy and RTs in a change-detection paradigm; this was also associated with increased P300 and N400 components as well as a sustained negative slow wave (NSW). In contrast, processing of the low semantic stimuli was associated with an increased N200 and a reduction in the P300. These findings suggest that semantic content can aid in reducing early visual processing of information and subsequent memory load by unitizing complex patterns into familiar forms. The N400/NSW may be associated with the requirements for maintaining visuo-spatial information about semantic forms such as orientation and relative location. Evidence for individual differences in semantic elaboration strategies used by participants is also discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Role of Shape in Semantic Memory Organization of Objects: An Experimental Study Using PI-Release.

PubMed

van Weelden, Lisanne; Schilperoord, Joost; Swerts, Marc; Pecher, Diane

2015-01-01

Visual information contributes fundamentally to the process of object categorization. The present study investigated whether the degree of activation of visual information in this process is dependent on the contextual relevance of this information. We used the Proactive Interference (PI-release) paradigm. In four experiments, we manipulated the information by which objects could be categorized and subsequently be retrieved from memory. The pattern of PI-release showed that if objects could be stored and retrieved both by (non-perceptual) semantic and (perceptual) shape information, then shape information was overruled by semantic information. If, however, semantic information could not be (satisfactorily) used to store and retrieve objects, then objects were stored in memory in terms of their shape. The latter effect was found to be strongest for objects from identical semantic categories.

Episodic, generalized, and semantic memory tests: switching and strength effects.

PubMed

Humphreys, Michael S; Murray, Krista L

2011-09-01

We continue the process of investigating the probabilistic paired associate paradigm in an effort to understand the memory access control processes involved and to determine whether the memory structure produced is in transition between episodic and semantic memory. In this paradigm two targets are probabilistically paired with a cue across a large number of short lists. Participants can recall the target paired with the cue in the most recent list (list specific test), produce the first of the two targets that have been paired with that cue to come to mind (generalised test), and produce a free association response (semantic test). Switching between a generalised test and a list specific test did not produce a switching cost indicating a general similarity in the control processes involved. In addition, there was evidence for a dissociation between two different strength manipulations (amount of study time and number of cue-target pairings) such that number of pairings influenced the list specific, generalised and the semantic test but amount of study time only influenced the list specific and generalised test. © 2011 Canadian Psychological Association

[Artificial intelligence meeting neuropsychology. Semantic memory in normal and pathological aging].

PubMed

Aimé, Xavier; Charlet, Jean; Maillet, Didier; Belin, Catherine

2015-03-01

Artificial intelligence (IA) is the subject of much research, but also many fantasies. It aims to reproduce human intelligence in its learning capacity, knowledge storage and computation. In 2014, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started the restoring active memory (RAM) program that attempt to develop implantable technology to bridge gaps in the injured brain and restore normal memory function to people with memory loss caused by injury or disease. In another IA's field, computational ontologies (a formal and shared conceptualization) try to model knowledge in order to represent a structured and unambiguous meaning of the concepts of a target domain. The aim of these structures is to ensure a consensual understanding of their meaning and a univariant use (the same concept is used by all to categorize the same individuals). The first representations of knowledge in the AI's domain are largely based on model tests of semantic memory. This one, as a component of long-term memory is the memory of words, ideas, concepts. It is the only declarative memory system that resists so remarkably to the effects of age. In contrast, non-specific cognitive changes may decrease the performance of elderly in various events and instead report difficulties of access to semantic representations that affect the semantics stock itself. Some dementias, like semantic dementia and Alzheimer's disease, are linked to alteration of semantic memory. We propose in this paper, using the computational ontologies model, a formal and relatively thin modeling, in the service of neuropsychology: 1) for the practitioner with decision support systems, 2) for the patient as cognitive prosthesis outsourced, and 3) for the researcher to study semantic memory.

The Construction of Semantic Memory: Grammar-Based Representations Learned from Relational Episodic Information

PubMed Central

Battaglia, Francesco P.; Pennartz, Cyriel M. A.

2011-01-01

After acquisition, memories underlie a process of consolidation, making them more resistant to interference and brain injury. Memory consolidation involves systems-level interactions, most importantly between the hippocampus and associated structures, which takes part in the initial encoding of memory, and the neocortex, which supports long-term storage. This dichotomy parallels the contrast between episodic memory (tied to the hippocampal formation), collecting an autobiographical stream of experiences, and semantic memory, a repertoire of facts and statistical regularities about the world, involving the neocortex at large. Experimental evidence points to a gradual transformation of memories, following encoding, from an episodic to a semantic character. This may require an exchange of information between different memory modules during inactive periods. We propose a theory for such interactions and for the formation of semantic memory, in which episodic memory is encoded as relational data. Semantic memory is modeled as a modified stochastic grammar, which learns to parse episodic configurations expressed as an association matrix. The grammar produces tree-like representations of episodes, describing the relationships between its main constituents at multiple levels of categorization, based on its current knowledge of world regularities. These regularities are learned by the grammar from episodic memory information, through an expectation-maximization procedure, analogous to the inside–outside algorithm for stochastic context-free grammars. We propose that a Monte-Carlo sampling version of this algorithm can be mapped on the dynamics of “sleep replay” of previously acquired information in the hippocampus and neocortex. We propose that the model can reproduce several properties of semantic memory such as decontextualization, top-down processing, and creation of schemata. PMID:21887143

The Role of Episodic and Semantic Memory in Episodic Foresight

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M.; Louw, Alyssa

2012-01-01

In this paper we describe a special form of future thinking, termed "episodic foresight" and its relation with episodic and semantic memory. We outline the methodologies that have largely been developed in the last five years to assess this capacity in young children and non-human animals. Drawing on Tulving's definition of episodic and semantic…

Language and Short-Term Memory: The Role of Perceptual-Motor Affordance

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

The advantage for real words over nonwords in serial recall—the lexicality effect—is typically attributed to support for item-level phonology, either via redintegration, whereby partially degraded short-term traces are “cleaned up” via support from long-term representations of the phonological material or via the more robust temporary activation of long-term lexical phonological knowledge that derives from its combination with established lexical and semantic levels of representation. The much smaller effect of lexicality in serial recognition, where the items are re-presented in the recognition cue, is attributed either to the minimal role for redintegration from long-term memory or to the minimal role for item memory itself in such retrieval conditions. We show that the reduced lexicality effect in serial recognition is not a function of the retrieval conditions, but rather because previous demonstrations have used auditory presentation, and we demonstrate a robust lexicality effect for visual serial recognition in a setting where auditory presentation produces no such effect. Furthermore, this effect is abolished under conditions of articulatory suppression. We argue that linguistic knowledge affects the readiness with which verbal material is segmentally recoded via speech motor processes that support rehearsal and therefore affects tasks that involve recoding. On the other hand, auditory perceptual organization affords sequence matching in the absence of such a requirement for segmental recoding and therefore does not show such effects of linguistic knowledge. PMID:24797440

Language and short-term memory: the role of perceptual-motor affordance.

PubMed

Macken, Bill; Taylor, John C; Jones, Dylan M

2014-09-01

The advantage for real words over nonwords in serial recall--the lexicality effect--is typically attributed to support for item-level phonology, either via redintegration, whereby partially degraded short-term traces are "cleaned up" via support from long-term representations of the phonological material or via the more robust temporary activation of long-term lexical phonological knowledge that derives from its combination with established lexical and semantic levels of representation. The much smaller effect of lexicality in serial recognition, where the items are re-presented in the recognition cue, is attributed either to the minimal role for redintegration from long-term memory or to the minimal role for item memory itself in such retrieval conditions. We show that the reduced lexicality effect in serial recognition is not a function of the retrieval conditions, but rather because previous demonstrations have used auditory presentation, and we demonstrate a robust lexicality effect for visual serial recognition in a setting where auditory presentation produces no such effect. Furthermore, this effect is abolished under conditions of articulatory suppression. We argue that linguistic knowledge affects the readiness with which verbal material is segmentally recoded via speech motor processes that support rehearsal and therefore affects tasks that involve recoding. On the other hand, auditory perceptual organization affords sequence matching in the absence of such a requirement for segmental recoding and therefore does not show such effects of linguistic knowledge.

Lower cognitive performance among long-term type 1 diabetes survivors: A case-control study.

PubMed

Awad, Anna; Lundqvist, Robert; Rolandsson, Olov; Sundström, Anna; Eliasson, Mats

2017-08-01

Patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have an increased risk of cognitive dysfunction. The cognitive decrement is believed to depend on macro- and microvascular complications and long disease duration. Some patients do not develop these complications, but still report cognitive symptoms. We examined if long-standing T1D without complications is associated with lower cognitive performance. A group of patients (n=43) with long-standing T1D (>30years) without micro- or macro vascular complications was compared with a non-diabetic control group (n=86) on six cognitive tests which probed episodic memory, semantic memory, episodic short-term memory, visual attention and psychomotor speed. Each patient was matched with two controls regarding age, gender and education. A linear mixed effect model was used to analyze the data. The mean age was 57years and mean duration was 41years. Patients with diabetes had lower diastolic blood pressure but BMI, waist circumference, systolic blood pressure and smoking did not differ between groups. Patients had lower results than non-diabetic controls in episodic short-term memory (p<0.001) and also lower values on a test that mirrors visual attention and psychomotor speed (p=0.019). Long-standing T1D was associated with lower cognitive performance, regardless of other diabetes-related complications. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Musical practice and cognitive aging: two cross-sectional studies point to phonemic fluency as a potential candidate for a use-dependent adaptation.

PubMed

Fauvel, Baptiste; Groussard, Mathilde; Mutlu, Justine; Arenaza-Urquijo, Eider M; Eustache, Francis; Desgranges, Béatrice; Platel, Hervé

2014-01-01

Because of permanent use-dependent brain plasticity, all lifelong individuals' experiences are believed to influence the cognitive aging quality. In older individuals, both former and current musical practices have been associated with better verbal skills, visual memory, processing speed, and planning function. This work sought for an interaction between musical practice and cognitive aging by comparing musician and non-musician individuals for two lifetime periods (middle and late adulthood). Long-term memory, auditory-verbal short-term memory, processing speed, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluencies were assessed. In Study 1, measures of processing speed and auditory-verbal short-term memory were significantly better performed by musicians compared with controls, but both groups displayed the same age-related differences. For verbal fluencies, musicians scored higher than controls and displayed different age effects. In Study 2, we found that lifetime period at training onset (childhood vs. adulthood) was associated with phonemic, but not semantic, fluency performances (musicians who had started to practice in adulthood did not perform better on phonemic fluency than non-musicians). Current frequency of training did not account for musicians' scores on either of these two measures. These patterns of results are discussed by setting the hypothesis of a transformative effect of musical practice against a non-causal explanation.

Visuospatial working memory in children with autism: the effect of a semantic global organization.

PubMed

Mammarella, Irene C; Giofrè, David; Caviola, Sara; Cornoldi, Cesare; Hamilton, Colin

2014-06-01

It has been reported that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) perceive visual scenes as a sparse set of details rather than as a congruent and meaningful unit, failing in the extraction of the global configuration of the scene. In the present study, children with ASD were compared with typically developing (TD) children, in a visuospatial working memory task, the Visual Patterns Test (VPT). The VPT array was manipulated to vary the semantic affordance of the pattern, high semantic (global) vs. low semantic; temporal parameters were also manipulated within the change detection protocol. Overall, there was no main effect associated with Group, however there was a significant effect associated with Semantics, which was further qualified by an interaction between the Group and Semantic factors; there was only a significant effect of semantics in the TD group. The findings are discussed in light of the weak central coherence theory where the ASD group are unable to make use of long term memory semantics in order to construct global representations of the array. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The N400 reveals how personal semantics is processed: Insights into the nature and organization of self-knowledge.

PubMed

Coronel, Jason C; Federmeier, Kara D

2016-04-01

There is growing recognition that some important forms of long-term memory are difficult to classify into one of the well-studied memory subtypes. One example is personal semantics. Like the episodes that are stored as part of one's autobiography, personal semantics is linked to an individual, yet, like general semantic memory, it is detached from a specific encoding context. Access to general semantics elicits an electrophysiological response known as the N400, which has been characterized across three decades of research; surprisingly, this response has not been fully examined in the context of personal semantics. In this study, we assessed responses to congruent and incongruent statements about people's own, personal preferences. We found that access to personal preferences elicited N400 responses, with congruency effects that were similar in latency and distribution to those for general semantic statements elicited from the same participants. These results suggest that the processing of personal and general semantics share important functional and neurobiological features. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Modality specific semantic knowledge loss for unique items.

PubMed

Kartsounis, L D; Shallice, T

1996-03-01

We report the case of a man who, following a major myocardial infarction, suffered anoxia followed by significant event memory impairment. Investigations indicated that his semantic memory for word concepts and object meanings was well preserved. However, he had great difficulty in identifying in the visual (but not verbal) modality historically known people, such as Queen Elizabeth I and Napoleon, and well known world and London landmarks, such as the Parthenon and Buckingham Palace. This selective impairment could not be accounted for in terms of prosopagnosia or high level visual perceptual deficits and we interpret it as a modality specific semantic memory loss for unique objects.

Aging and Semantic Activation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Darlene V.

Three studies tested the theory that long term memory consists of a semantically organized network of concept nodes interconnected by leveled associations or relations, and that when a stimulus is processed, the corresponding concept node is assumed to be temporarily activated and this activation spreads to nearby semantically related nodes. In…

BDNF and TNF-α polymorphisms in memory.

PubMed

Yogeetha, B S; Haupt, L M; McKenzie, K; Sutherland, H G; Okolicsyani, R K; Lea, R A; Maher, B H; Chan, R C K; Shum, D H K; Griffiths, L R

2013-09-01

Here, we investigate the genetic basis of human memory in healthy individuals and the potential role of two polymorphisms, previously implicated in memory function. We have explored aspects of retrospective and prospective memory including semantic, short term, working and long-term memory in conjunction with brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α). The memory scores for healthy individuals in the population were obtained for each memory type and the population was genotyped via restriction fragment length polymorphism for the BDNF rs6265 (Val66Met) SNP and via pyrosequencing for the TNF-α rs113325588 SNP. Using univariate ANOVA, a significant association of the BDNF polymorphism with visual and spatial memory retention and a significant association of the TNF-α polymorphism was observed with spatial memory retention. In addition, a significant interactive effect between BDNF and TNF-α polymorphisms was observed in spatial memory retention. In practice visual memory involves spatial information and the two memory systems work together, however our data demonstrate that individuals with the Val/Val BDNF genotype have poorer visual memory but higher spatial memory retention, indicating a level of interaction between TNF-α and BDNF in spatial memory retention. This is the first study to use genetic analysis to determine the interaction between BDNF and TNF-α in relation to memory in normal adults and provides important information regarding the effect of genetic determinants and gene interactions on human memory.

Color appearance of familiar objects: effects of object shape, texture, and illumination changes.

PubMed

Olkkonen, Maria; Hansen, Thorsten; Gegenfurtner, Karl R

2008-05-26

People perceive roughly constant surface colors despite large changes in illumination. The familiarity of colors of some natural objects might help achieve this feat through direct modulation of the objects' color appearance. Research on memory colors and color appearance has yielded controversial results and due to the employed methods has often confounded perceptual with semantic effects. We studied the effect of memory colors on color appearance by presenting photographs of fruit on a monitor under various simulated illuminations and by asking observers to make either achromatic or typical color settings without placing demands on short-term memory or semantic processing. In a control condition, we presented photographs of 3D fruit shapes without texture and 2D outline shapes. We found that (1) achromatic settings for fruit were systematically biased away from the gray point toward the opposite direction of a fruit's memory color; (2) the strength of the effect depended on the degree of naturalness of the stimuli; and (3) the effect was evident under all tested illuminations, being strongest for illuminations whose chromaticity was closest to the stimulus chromaticity. We conclude that the visual identity of an object has a measurable effect on color perception, and that this effect is robust under illuminant changes, indicating its potential significance as an additional mechanism for color constancy.

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory.

PubMed

Pardilla-Delgado, Enmanuelle; Payne, Jessica D

2017-01-31

The Deese, Roediger and McDermott (DRM) task is a false memory paradigm in which subjects are presented with lists of semantically related words (e.g., nurse, hospital, etc.) at encoding. After a delay, subjects are asked to recall or recognize these words. In the recognition memory version of the task, subjects are asked whether they remember previously presented words, as well as related (but never presented) critical lure words ('doctor'). Typically, the critical word is recognized with high probability and confidence. This false memory effect has been robustly demonstrated across short (e.g., immediate, 20 min) and long (e.g., 1, 7, 60 d) delays between encoding and memory testing. A strength of using this task to study false memory is its simplicity and short duration. If encoding and retrieval components of the task occur in the same session, the entire task can take as little as 2 - 30 min. However, although the DRM task is widely considered a 'false memory' paradigm, some researchers consider DRM illusions to be based on the activation of semantic memory networks in the brain, and argue that such semantic gist-based false memory errors may actually be useful in some scenarios (e.g., remembering the forest for the trees; remembering that a word list was about "doctors", even though the actual word "doctor" was never presented for study). Remembering the gist of experience (instead of or along with individual details) is arguably an adaptive process and this task has provided a great deal of knowledge about the constructive, adaptive nature of memory. Therefore, researchers should use caution when discussing the overall reach and implications of their experiments when using this task to study 'false memory', as DRM memory errors may not adequately reflect false memories in the real world, such as false memory in eyewitness testimony, or false memories of sexual abuse.

The effects of associative and semantic priming in the lexical decision task.

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Rosa, Eva

2002-08-01

Four lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine under which conditions automatic semantic priming effects can be obtained. Experiments 1 and 2 analyzed associative/semantic effects at several very short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), whereas Experiments 3 and 4 used a single-presentation paradigm at two response-stimulus intervals (RSIs). Experiment 1 tested associatively related pairs from three semantic categories (synonyms, antonyms, and category coordinates). The results showed reliable associative priming effects at all SOAs. In addition, the correlation between associative strength and magnitude of priming was significant only at the shortest SOA (66 ms). When prime-target pairs were semantically but not associatively related (Experiment 2), reliable priming effects were obtained at SOAs of 83 ms and longer. Using the single-presentation paradigm with a short RSI (200 ms, Experiment 3), the priming effect was equal in size for associative + semantic and for semantic-only pairs (a 21-ms effect). When the RSI was set much longer (1,750 ms, Experiment 4), only the associative + semantic pairs showed a reliable priming effect (23 ms). The results are interpreted in the context of models of semantic memory.

The Role of Semantic Features in Verb Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bonnotte, Isabelle

2008-01-01

The present study examined the general hypothesis that, as for nouns, stable representations of semantic knowledge relative to situations expressed by verbs are available and accessible in long term memory in normal people. Regular associations between verbs and past tenses in French adults allowed to abstract two superordinate semantic features…

Similar autobiographical memory impairment in long-term secondary progressive multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Müller, S; Saur, R; Greve, B; Melms, A; Hautzinger, M; Fallgatter, A J; Leyhe, T

2013-02-01

Memory disturbance is a common symptom of multiple sclerosis (MS), but little is known about autobiographical memory deficits in the long-term course of different MS subtypes. Inflammatory activity and demyelination is pronounced in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) whereas, similar to Alzheimer's disease, neurodegeneration affecting autobiographical memory-associated areas is seen in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS). In light of distinct disease mechanisms, we evaluated autobiographical memory in different MS subtypes and hypothesized similarities between elderly patients with SPMS and Alzheimer's disease. We used the Autobiographical Memory Interview to assess episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in 112 education- and gender-matched participants, including healthy controls and patients with RRMS, SPMS, amnesic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and early Alzheimer's dementia (AD). Patients with SPMS, AD, and aMCI, but not with RRMS, exhibited a pattern of episodic autobiographical memory impairment that followed Ribot's Law; older memories were better preserved than more recent memories. In contrast to aMCI and AD, neither SPMS nor RRMS was associated with semantic autobiographical memory impairment. Our neuropsychological findings suggest that episodic autobiographical memory is affected in long-term patients with SPMS, possibly due to neurodegenerative processes in functional relevant brain regions.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Semantic Memory as a Presymptomatic Biomarker of Alzheimer’s Disease Risk

PubMed Central

Sugarman, Michael A.; Woodard, John L.; Nielson, Kristy A.; Seidenberg, Michael; Smith, J. Carson; Durgerian, Sally; Rao, Stephen M.

2011-01-01

Extensive research efforts have been directed toward strategies for predicting risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) prior to the appearance of observable symptoms. Existing approaches for early detection of AD vary in terms of their efficacy, invasiveness, and ease of implementation. Several non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging strategies have been developed for predicting decline in cognitively healthy older adults. This review will survey a number of studies, beginning with the development of a famous name discrimination task used to identify neural regions that participate in semantic memory retrieval and to test predictions of several key theories of the role of the hippocampus in memory. This task has revealed medial temporal and neocortical contributions to recent and remote memory retrieval, and it has been used to demonstrate compensatory neural recruitment in older adults, apolipoprotein E ε4 carriers, and amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients. Recently, we have also found that the famous name discrimination task provides predictive value for forecasting episodic memory decline among asymptomatic older adults. Other studies investigating the predictive value of semantic memory tasks will also be presented. We suggest several advantages associated with the use of semantic processing tasks, particularly those based on person identification, in comparison to episodic memory tasks to study AD risk. Future directions for research and potential clinical uses of semantic memory paradigms are also discussed. PMID:21996618

Only time will tell - why temporal information is essential for our neuroscientific understanding of semantics.

PubMed

Hauk, Olaf

2016-08-01

Theoretical developments about the nature of semantic representations and processes should be accompanied by a discussion of how these theories can be validated on the basis of empirical data. Here, I elaborate on the link between theory and empirical research, highlighting the need for temporal information in order to distinguish fundamental aspects of semantics. The generic point that fast cognitive processes demand fast measurement techniques has been made many times before, although arguably more often in the psychophysiological community than in the metabolic neuroimaging community. Many reviews on the neuroscience of semantics mostly or even exclusively focus on metabolic neuroimaging data. Following an analysis of semantics in terms of the representations and processes involved, I argue that fundamental theoretical debates about the neuroscience of semantics can only be concluded on the basis of data with sufficient temporal resolution. Any "semantic effect" may result from a conflation of long-term memory representations, retrieval and working memory processes, mental imagery, and episodic memory. This poses challenges for all neuroimaging modalities, but especially for those with low temporal resolution. It also throws doubt on the usefulness of contrasts between meaningful and meaningless stimuli, which may differ on a number of semantic and non-semantic dimensions. I will discuss the consequences of this analysis for research on the role of convergence zones or hubs and distributed modal brain networks, top-down modulation of task and context as well as interactivity between levels of the processing hierarchy, for example in the framework of predictive coding.

Resting-state functional connectivity and pitch identification ability in non-musicians

PubMed Central

Hou, Jiancheng; Chen, Chuansheng; Dong, Qi

2015-01-01

Previous studies have used task-related fMRI to investigate the neural basis of pitch identification (PI), but no study has examined the associations between resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and PI ability. Using a large sample of Chinese non-musicians (N = 320, with 56 having prior musical training), the current study examined the associations among musical training, PI ability, and RSFC. Results showed that musical training was associated with increased RSFC within the networks for multiple cognitive functions (such as vision, phonology, semantics, auditory encoding, and executive functions). PI ability was associated with RSFC with regions for perceptual and auditory encoding for participants with musical training, and with RSFC with regions for short-term memory, semantics, and phonology for participants without musical training. PMID:25717289

Making the case that episodic recollection is attributable to operations occurring at retrieval rather than to content stored in a dedicated subsystem of long-term memory.

PubMed

Klein, Stanley B

2013-01-01

Episodic memory often is conceptualized as a uniquely human system of long-term memory that makes available knowledge accompanied by the temporal and spatial context in which that knowledge was acquired. Retrieval from episodic memory entails a form of first-person subjectivity called autonoetic consciousness that provides a sense that a recollection was something that took place in the experiencer's personal past. In this paper I expand on this definition of episodic memory. Specifically, I suggest that (1) the core features assumed unique to episodic memory are shared by semantic memory, (2) episodic memory cannot be fully understood unless one appreciates that episodic recollection requires the coordinated function of a number of distinct, yet interacting, "enabling" systems. Although these systems-ownership, self, subjective temporality, and agency-are not traditionally viewed as memorial in nature, each is necessary for episodic recollection and jointly they may be sufficient, and (3) the type of subjective awareness provided by episodic recollection (autonoetic) is relational rather than intrinsic-i.e., it can be lost in certain patient populations, thus rendering episodic memory content indistinguishable from the content of semantic long-term memory.

Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep.

PubMed

de Almeida Valverde Zanini, Gislaine; Tufik, Sérgio; Andersen, Monica Levy; da Silva, Raquel Cristina Martins; Bueno, Orlando Francisco Amodeo; Rodrigues, Camila Cruz; Pompéia, Sabine

2012-02-01

One task that has been used to assess memory effects of prior total sleep deprivation (TSD) is the immediate free recall of word lists; however, results have been mixed. A possible explanation for this is task impurity, since recall of words from different serial positions reflects use of distinct types of memory (last words: short-term memory; first and intermediate words: episodic memory). Here we studied the effects of 2 nights of TSD on immediate free recall of semantically unrelated word lists considering the serial position curve. Random allocation to a 2-night TSD protocol followed by one night of recovery sleep or to a control group. Study conducted under continuous behavioral monitoring. 24 young, healthy male volunteers. 2 nights of total sleep deprivation (TSD) and one night of recovery sleep. Participants were shown five 15 unrelated word-lists at baseline, after one and 2 nights of TSD, and after one night of recovery sleep. We also investigated the development of recall strategies (learning) and susceptibility to interference from previous lists. No free recall impairment occurred during TSD, irrespective of serial position. Interference was unchanged. Both groups developed recall strategies, but task learning occurred earlier in controls and was evident in the TSD group only after sleep recovery. Prior TSD spared episodic memory, short-term phonological memory, and interference, allowed the development of recall strategies, but may have decreased the advantage of using these strategies, which returned to normal after recovery sleep.

Preserved semantic access in global amnesia and hippocampal damage.

PubMed

Giovagnoli, A R; Erbetta, A; Bugiani, O

2001-12-01

C.B., a right-handed 33-year-old man, presented with anterograde amnesia after acute heart block. Cognitive abilities were normal except for serious impairment of long-term episodic memory. The access to semantic information was fully preserved. Magnetic resonance showed high signal intensity and marked volume loss in the hippocampus bilaterally; the left and right parahippocampal gyrus, lateral occipito-temporal gyrus, inferior temporal gyrus, and lateral temporal cortex were normal. This case underlines that global amnesia associated with hippocampal damage does not affect semantic memory. Although the hippocampus is important in retrieving context-linked information, its role is not so crucial in retrieving semantic contents. Cortical areas surrounding the hippocampus and lateral temporal areas might guide the recall of semantic information.

Memory illusion in high-functioning autism and Asperger's disorder.

PubMed

Kamio, Yoko; Toichi, Motomi

2007-05-01

In this study, 13 individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA), 15 individuals with Asperger's disorder (AD), and age-, and IQ-matched controls were presented a list of sentences auditorily. Participants then evaluated semantically related but new sentences and reported whether they were old or new. The total rates of false recognition for semantically related sentences were similar among the three groups. Nevertheless, memory illusion on some aspects was reduced in HFA participants. These results suggest that HFA have difficulties in semantic association. Although individuals with AD showed no quantitative abnormalities of memory illusion, some contributing factors were atypical. These findings are discussed in terms of schema theory, enhanced perceptual processing hypothesis, and weak central coherence hypothesis.

A longitudinal study of semantic grouping strategy use in 6-11-year-old children: investigating developmental phases, the role of working memory, and strategy transfer.

PubMed

Schleepen, Tamara M J; Jonkman, Lisa M

2014-01-01

This two-cohort longitudinal study on the development of the semantic grouping strategy had three goals. First, the authors examined if 6-7-year-olds are nonstrategic before becoming strategic after prompting at 8-9 years of age, and if 8-9-year-olds are prompted strategic before spontaneous strategy use at 10-11 years of age. Children 6-7 and 8-9 years old performed two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping prompt) at two time points separated 1.5 years from each other. Second, the authors investigated whether short-term or working memory capacity at time point 1 predicted recall in children who did or did not use the semantic grouping strategy 1.5 years later. Third, the authors investigated whether prompted strategic children and children who used the strategy spontaneously differed in strategy transfer to a new task. Developmental results confirmed previous cross-sectional results, but in a longitudinal two-cohort study 6-7-year-olds were nonstrategic, and became prompted strategic around 8-9 years of age, followed by spontaneous strategy use at age 10-11 years. The authors found that memory capacity was not predictive of later use of the strategy. New findings were that prompted strategic children were as equally able as spontaneously strategic children to transfer the strategy to a new task, albeit with smaller recall benefits.

The word-length effect and disyllabic words.

PubMed

Lovatt, P; Avons, S E; Masterson, J

2000-02-01

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.

What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?

PubMed

Cowan, Nelson

2008-01-01

In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rather encouraging regarding the existence of both decay and capacity limits. Working memory has been conceived and defined in three different, slightly discrepant ways: as short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks, as a multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in short-term memory, and as the use of attention to manage short-term memory. Regardless of the definition, there are some measures of memory in the short term that seem routine and do not correlate well with cognitive aptitudes and other measures (those usually identified with the term "working memory") that seem more attention demanding and do correlate well with these aptitudes. The evidence is evaluated and placed within a theoretical framework depicted in Fig. 1.

Degenerative jargon aphasia: unusual progression of logopenic/phonological progressive aphasia?

PubMed

Caffarra, Paolo; Gardini, Simona; Cappa, Stefano; Dieci, Francesca; Concari, Letizia; Barocco, Federica; Ghetti, Caterina; Ruffini, Livia; Prati, Guido Dalla Rosa

2013-01-01

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) corresponds to the gradual degeneration of language which can occur as nonfluent/agrammatic PPA, semantic variant PPA or logopenic variant PPA. We describe the clinical evolution of a patient with PPA presenting jargon aphasia as a late feature. At the onset of the disease (ten years ago) the patient showed anomia and executive deficits, followed later on by phonemic paraphasias and neologisms, deficits in verbal short-term memory, naming, verbal and semantic fluency. At recent follow-up the patient developed an unintelligible jargon with both semantic and neologistic errors, as well as with severe deficit of comprehension which precluded any further neuropsychological assessment. Compared to healthy controls, FDG-PET showed a hypometabolism in the left angular and middle temporal gyri, precuneus, caudate, posterior cingulate, middle frontal gyrus, and bilaterally in the superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri. The clinical and neuroimaging profile seems to support the hypothesis that the patient developed a late feature of logopenic variant PPA characterized by jargonaphasia and associated with superior temporal and parietal dysfunction.

Similarities and Differences between Working Memory and Long-Term Memory: Evidence from the Levels-of-Processing Span Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rose, Nathan S.; Myerson, Joel; Roediger, Henry L., III; Hale, Sandra

2010-01-01

Two experiments compared the effects of depth of processing on working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) using a levels-of-processing (LOP) span task, a newly developed WM span procedure that involves processing to-be-remembered words based on their visual, phonological, or semantic characteristics. Depth of processing had minimal effect on…

Musical and Verbal Memory in Alzheimer's Disease: A Study of Long-Term and Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Menard, Marie-Claude; Belleville, Sylvie

2009-01-01

Musical memory was tested in Alzheimer patients and in healthy older adults using long-term and short-term memory tasks. Long-term memory (LTM) was tested with a recognition procedure using unfamiliar melodies. Short-term memory (STM) was evaluated with same/different judgment tasks on short series of notes. Musical memory was compared to verbal…

What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?

PubMed Central

Cowan, Nelson

2008-01-01

In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rather encouraging regarding the existence of both decay and capacity limits. Working memory has been conceived and defined in three different, slightly discrepant ways: as short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks, as a multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in short-term memory, and as the use of attention to manage short-term memory. Regardless of the definition, there are some measures of memory in the short term that seem routine and do not correlate well with cognitive aptitudes and other measures (those usually identified with the term “working memory”) that seem more attention demanding and do correlate well with these aptitudes. The evidence is evaluated and placed within a theoretical framework depicted in Fig. 1. PMID:18394484

Comparing different types of source memory attributes in dementia of Alzheimer's type.

PubMed

Mammarella, Nicola; Fairfield, Beth; Di Domenico, Alberto

2012-04-01

Source monitoring (SM) refers to our ability to discriminate between memories from different sources. Twenty healthy high-cognitive functioning older adults, 20 healthy low-cognitive functioning older adults, and 20 older adults with dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT) were asked to perform a series of SM tasks that varied in terms of the to-be-remembered source attribute (perceptual, spatial, temporal, semantic, social, and affective details). Results indicated that older DAT adults had greater difficulty in SM compared to the healthy control groups, especially with spatial and semantic details. Data are discussed in terms of the SM framework and suggest that poor memory for some types of source information may be considered as an important indicator of clinical memory function when assessing for the presence and severity of dementia.

Motivated encoding selectively promotes memory for future inconsequential semantically-related events.

PubMed

Oyarzún, Javiera P; Packard, Pau A; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Fuentemilla, Lluis

2016-09-01

Neurobiological models of long-term memory explain how memory for inconsequential events fades, unless these happen before or after other relevant (i.e., rewarding or aversive) or novel events. Recently, it has been shown in humans that retrospective and prospective memories are selectively enhanced if semantically related events are paired with aversive stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether motivating stimuli, as opposed to aversive, have the same effect in humans. Here, participants performed a three phase incidental encoding task where one semantic category was rewarded during the second phase. A memory test 24h after, but not immediately after encoding, revealed that memory for inconsequential items was selectively enhanced only if items from the same category had been previously, but not subsequently, paired with rewards. This result suggests that prospective memory enhancement of reward-related information requires, like previously reported for aversive memories, of a period of memory consolidation. The current findings provide the first empirical evidence in humans that the effects of motivated encoding are selectively and prospectively prolonged over time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Memory for environmental sounds in sighted, congenitally blind and late blind adults: evidence for cross-modal compensation.

PubMed

Röder, Brigitte; Rösler, Frank

2003-10-01

Several recent reports suggest compensatory performance changes in blind individuals. It has, however, been argued that the lack of visual input leads to impoverished semantic networks resulting in the use of data-driven rather than conceptual encoding strategies on memory tasks. To test this hypothesis, congenitally blind and sighted participants encoded environmental sounds either physically or semantically. In the recognition phase, both conceptually as well as physically distinct and physically distinct but conceptually highly related lures were intermixed with the environmental sounds encountered during study. Participants indicated whether or not they had heard a sound in the study phase. Congenitally blind adults showed elevated memory both after physical and semantic encoding. After physical encoding blind participants had lower false memory rates than sighted participants, whereas the false memory rates of sighted and blind participants did not differ after semantic encoding. In order to address the question if compensatory changes in memory skills are restricted to critical periods during early childhood, late blind adults were tested with the same paradigm. When matched for age, they showed similarly high memory scores as the congenitally blind. These results demonstrate compensatory performance changes in long-term memory functions due to the loss of a sensory system and provide evidence for high adaptive capabilities of the human cognitive system.

Study on memories of temporal lobes and the principles of lateralization using near infrared spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kamakura, Katsutoshi

2007-01-01

In this study we measured the variation of brain blood quantity (Oxy-Hb, Deoxy-Hb and Total-Hb) in the temporal lobes using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) when the tasks of the memories were presented to the subjects. The memories are classified into the short-term memory (STM) and the long-term memory (LTM) including the episodic and semantic memories. The subjects joined in this study are 11 persons who are university students including graduate students. We used the language task of letter-number sequencing, also reverse sequencing to measure STM and the task of the episodic memory to measure LTM. As a result of analysis, concerning the episodic memory, the variation of Oxy-Hb in the left temporal lobe was larger than that of Oxy-Hb in the right temporal lobe. The result might suggest that the episodic memory has a relationship with cerebral dominance concerning language area in the left temporal lobe. It seems that the episodic memory meditated with the function of language used in this study is much stored in the left temporal lobe than in the right temporal lobe. This result coincides with the principles of lateralization. The variation of Oxy-Hb in the language task of letter-number sequencing was smaller than that of Oxy-Hb in the language task of the episodic memory.

When music and long-term memory interact: effects of musical expertise on functional and structural plasticity in the hippocampus.

PubMed

Groussard, Mathilde; La Joie, Renaud; Rauchs, Géraldine; Landeau, Brigitte; Chételat, Gaël; Viader, Fausto; Desgranges, Béatrice; Eustache, Francis; Platel, Hervé

2010-10-05

The development of musical skills by musicians results in specific structural and functional modifications in the brain. Surprisingly, no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study has investigated the impact of musical training on brain function during long-term memory retrieval, a faculty particularly important in music. Thus, using fMRI, we examined for the first time this process during a musical familiarity task (i.e., semantic memory for music). Musical expertise induced supplementary activations in the hippocampus, medial frontal gyrus, and superior temporal areas on both sides, suggesting a constant interaction between episodic and semantic memory during this task in musicians. In addition, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) investigation was performed within these areas and revealed that gray matter density of the hippocampus was higher in musicians than in nonmusicians. Our data indicate that musical expertise critically modifies long-term memory processes and induces structural and functional plasticity in the hippocampus.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of semantic memory as a presymptomatic biomarker of Alzheimer's disease risk.

PubMed

Sugarman, Michael A; Woodard, John L; Nielson, Kristy A; Seidenberg, Michael; Smith, J Carson; Durgerian, Sally; Rao, Stephen M

2012-03-01

Extensive research efforts have been directed toward strategies for predicting risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) prior to the appearance of observable symptoms. Existing approaches for early detection of AD vary in terms of their efficacy, invasiveness, and ease of implementation. Several non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging strategies have been developed for predicting decline in cognitively healthy older adults. This review will survey a number of studies, beginning with the development of a famous name discrimination task used to identify neural regions that participate in semantic memory retrieval and to test predictions of several key theories of the role of the hippocampus in memory. This task has revealed medial temporal and neocortical contributions to recent and remote memory retrieval, and it has been used to demonstrate compensatory neural recruitment in older adults, apolipoprotein E ε4 carriers, and amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients. Recently, we have also found that the famous name discrimination task provides predictive value for forecasting episodic memory decline among asymptomatic older adults. Other studies investigating the predictive value of semantic memory tasks will also be presented. We suggest several advantages associated with the use of semantic processing tasks, particularly those based on person identification, in comparison to episodic memory tasks to study AD risk. Future directions for research and potential clinical uses of semantic memory paradigms are also discussed. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Imaging Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative disease. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Processing of Formational, Semantic, and Iconic Information in American Sign Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Poizner, Howard; And Others

1981-01-01

Three experiments examined short-term encoding processes of deaf signers for different aspects of signs from American Sign Language. Results indicated that deaf signers code signs at one level in terms of linguistically significant formational parameters. The semantic and iconic information of signs, however, has little effect on short-term…

Flynn effects on sub-factors of episodic and semantic memory: parallel gains over time and the same set of determining factors.

PubMed

Rönnlund, Michael; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

2009-09-01

The study examined the extent to which time-related gains in cognitive performance, so-called Flynn effects, generalize across sub-factors of episodic memory (recall and recognition) and semantic memory (knowledge and fluency). We conducted time-sequential analyses of data drawn from the Betula prospective cohort study, involving four age-matched samples (35-80 years; N=2996) tested on the same battery of memory tasks on either of four occasions (1989, 1995, 1999, and 2004). The results demonstrate substantial time-related improvements on recall and recognition as well as on fluency and knowledge, with a trend of larger gains on semantic as compared with episodic memory [Rönnlund, M., & Nilsson, L. -G. (2008). The magnitude, generality, and determinants of Flynn effects on forms of declarative memory: Time-sequential analyses of data from a Swedish cohort study. Intelligence], but highly similar gains across the sub-factors. Finally, the association with markers of environmental change was similar, with evidence that historical increases in quantity of schooling was a main driving force behind the gains, both on the episodic and semantic sub-factors. The results obtained are discussed in terms of brain regions involved.

Semantic Memory in the Clinical Progression of Alzheimer Disease.

PubMed

Tchakoute, Christophe T; Sainani, Kristin L; Henderson, Victor W

2017-09-01

Semantic memory measures may be useful in tracking and predicting progression of Alzheimer disease. We investigated relationships among semantic memory tasks and their 1-year predictive value in women with Alzheimer disease. We conducted secondary analyses of a randomized clinical trial of raloxifene in 42 women with late-onset mild-to-moderate Alzheimer disease. We assessed semantic memory with tests of oral confrontation naming, category fluency, semantic recognition and semantic naming, and semantic density in written narrative discourse. We measured global cognition (Alzheimer Disease Assessment Scale, cognitive subscale), dementia severity (Clinical Dementia Rating sum of boxes), and daily function (Activities of Daily Living Inventory) at baseline and 1 year. At baseline and 1 year, most semantic memory scores correlated highly or moderately with each other and with global cognition, dementia severity, and daily function. Semantic memory task performance at 1 year had worsened one-third to one-half standard deviation. Factor analysis of baseline test scores distinguished processes in semantic and lexical retrieval (semantic recognition, semantic naming, confrontation naming) from processes in lexical search (semantic density, category fluency). The semantic-lexical retrieval factor predicted global cognition at 1 year. Considered separately, baseline confrontation naming and category fluency predicted dementia severity, while semantic recognition and a composite of semantic recognition and semantic naming predicted global cognition. No individual semantic memory test predicted daily function. Semantic-lexical retrieval and lexical search may represent distinct aspects of semantic memory. Semantic memory processes are sensitive to cognitive decline and dementia severity in Alzheimer disease.

Neuroplastic Response After Radiation Therapy for Pediatric Brain Tumors: A Pilot Study

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

Armstrong, Carol L., E-mail: armstrongc@email.chop.edu; Fisher, Michael J.; Li, Yimei

Purpose: Clinically effective measurement of cognitive toxicity from photon radiation therapy (XRT) should be accurate, sensitive, and specific. This pilot study tested translational findings on phasic changes in children's memory systems that are sensitive and insensitive to toxic XRT effects to identify a possible neuroplastic effect. Methods and Materials: Memory processes were prospectively tested before XRT and at 3 later time points up to 2 years in 35 children with mixed primary brain tumors who had not experienced recurrence. Memory processes were verbal-semantic, visual-semantic, and visual-perceptual, including accuracy, speed to recall, encoding, retrieval, and recognition. The mixed-effects model included time (tomore » estimate slope), covariates (age, tumor locus, XRT field, and medications) as fixed effects, and individual random intercepts. A sensitivity analysis examined the influence of XRT dose to the hippocampi on memory. Results: Retrieval from long-term verbal-semantic memory declined 2 months after completing XRT, as seen in adults, and was lowest at 1 year, which was delayed in comparison with adults. Double dissociation from visual-perceptual memory at baseline and 2 months was found, consistent with adults. Recovery was demonstrated 2 years after XRT. Patterns were unchanged when dose to hippocampus was included in the model. Conclusions: Verbal and semantic long-term retrieval is specifically sensitive to XRT-related cognitive dysfunction, without effect on visual-perceptual memory. Children reached nadir in XRT-sensitive memory 1 year after XRT and recovered by 2 years, which is later than that observed in adults. The protracted period of post-XRT injury may represent the maturation of the human hippocampus and white matter into late adolescence.« less

Neuropsychological Testing in Interventional Cardiology Staff after Long-Term Exposure to Ionizing Radiation.

PubMed

Marazziti, Donatella; Tomaiuolo, Francesco; Dell'Osso, Liliana; Demi, Virginia; Campana, Serena; Piccaluga, Emanuela; Guagliumi, Giulio; Conversano, Ciro; Baroni, Stefano; Andreassi, Maria Grazia; Picano, Eugenio

2015-10-01

This study aimed at comparing neuropsychological test scores in 83 cardiologists and nurses (exposed group, EG) working in the cardiac catheterization laboratory, and 83 control participants (non exposed group, nEG), to explore possible cognitive impairments. The neuropsychological assessment was carried out by means of a battery called "Esame Neuropsicologico Breve." EG participants showed significantly lower scores on the delayed recall, visual short-term memory, and semantic lexical access ability than the nEG ones. No dose response could be detected. EG participants showed lower memory and verbal fluency performances, as compared with nEG. These reduced skills suggest alterations of some left hemisphere structures that are more exposed to IR in interventional cardiology staff. On the basis of these findings, therefore, head protection would be a mandatory good practice to reduce effects of head exposure to ionizing radiation among invasive cardiology personnel (and among other exposed professionals).

A common neural substrate for language production and verbal working memory.

PubMed

Acheson, Daniel J; Hamidi, Massihullah; Binder, Jeffrey R; Postle, Bradley R

2011-06-01

Verbal working memory (VWM), the ability to maintain and manipulate representations of speech sounds over short periods, is held by some influential models to be independent from the systems responsible for language production and comprehension [e.g., Baddeley, A. D. Working memory, thought, and action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007]. We explore the alternative hypothesis that maintenance in VWM is subserved by temporary activation of the language production system [Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. Verbal working memory and language production: Common approaches to the serial ordering of verbal information. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 50-68, 2009b]. Specifically, we hypothesized that for stimuli lacking a semantic representation (e.g., nonwords such as mun), maintenance in VWM can be achieved by cycling information back and forth between the stages of phonological encoding and articulatory planning. First, fMRI was used to identify regions associated with two different stages of language production planning: the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) for phonological encoding (critical for VWM of nonwords) and the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) for lexical-semantic retrieval (not critical for VWM of nonwords). Next, in the same subjects, these regions were targeted with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) during language production and VWM task performance. Results showed that rTMS to the pSTG, but not the MTG, increased error rates on paced reading (a language production task) and on delayed serial recall of nonwords (a test of VWM). Performance on a lexical-semantic retrieval task (picture naming), in contrast, was significantly sensitive to rTMS of the MTG. Because rTMS was guided by language production-related activity, these results provide the first causal evidence that maintenance in VWM directly depends on the long-term representations and processes used in speech production.

Making the case that episodic recollection is attributable to operations occurring at retrieval rather than to content stored in a dedicated subsystem of long-term memory

PubMed Central

Klein, Stanley B.

2013-01-01

Episodic memory often is conceptualized as a uniquely human system of long-term memory that makes available knowledge accompanied by the temporal and spatial context in which that knowledge was acquired. Retrieval from episodic memory entails a form of first–person subjectivity called autonoetic consciousness that provides a sense that a recollection was something that took place in the experiencer's personal past. In this paper I expand on this definition of episodic memory. Specifically, I suggest that (1) the core features assumed unique to episodic memory are shared by semantic memory, (2) episodic memory cannot be fully understood unless one appreciates that episodic recollection requires the coordinated function of a number of distinct, yet interacting, “enabling” systems. Although these systems—ownership, self, subjective temporality, and agency—are not traditionally viewed as memorial in nature, each is necessary for episodic recollection and jointly they may be sufficient, and (3) the type of subjective awareness provided by episodic recollection (autonoetic) is relational rather than intrinsic—i.e., it can be lost in certain patient populations, thus rendering episodic memory content indistinguishable from the content of semantic long-term memory. PMID:23378832

Priming Effects in Word-Fragment Completion Are Independent of Recognition Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tulving, Endel; And Others

1982-01-01

Since the priming effects described in this article were independent of episodic memory, and since there were problems with their interpretation in terms of modifications of semantic memory, it is felt that they reflect the operation of some other, as yet little understood, memory system. (Author/PN)

Differentiation of perceptual and semantic subsequent memory effects using an orthographic paradigm.

PubMed

Kuo, Michael C C; Liu, Karen P Y; Ting, Kin Hung; Chan, Chetwyn C H

2012-11-27

This study aimed to differentiate perceptual and semantic encoding processes using subsequent memory effects (SMEs) elicited by the recognition of orthographs of single Chinese characters. Participants studied a series of Chinese characters perceptually (by inspecting orthographic components) or semantically (by determining the object making sounds), and then made studied or unstudied judgments during the recognition phase. Recognition performance in terms of d-prime measure in the semantic condition was higher, though not significant, than that of the perceptual condition. The between perceptual-semantic condition differences in SMEs at P550 and late positive component latencies (700-1000ms) were not significant in the frontal area. An additional analysis identified larger SME in the semantic condition during 600-1000ms in the frontal pole regions. These results indicate that coordination and incorporation of orthographic information into mental representation is essential to both task conditions. The differentiation was also revealed in earlier SMEs (perceptual>semantic) at N3 (240-360ms) latency, which is a novel finding. The left-distributed N3 was interpreted as more efficient processing of meaning with semantically learned characters. Frontal pole SMEs indicated strategic processing by executive functions, which would further enhance memory. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

[Schizophrenia and semantic priming effects].

PubMed

Lecardeur, L; Giffard, B; Eustache, F; Dollfus, S

2006-01-01

This article is a review of studies using the semantic priming paradigm to assess the functioning of semantic memory in schizophrenic patients. Semantic priming describes the phenomenon of increasing the speed with which a string of letters (the target) is recognized as a word (lexical decision task) by presenting to the subject a semantically related word (the prime) prior to the appearance of the target word. This semantic priming is linked to both automatic and controlled processes depending on experimental conditions (stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), percentage of related words and explicit memory instructions). Automatic process observed with short SOA, low related word percentage and instructions asking only to process the target, could be linked to the "automatic spreading activation" through the semantic network. Controlled processes involve "semantic matching" (the number of related and unrelated pairs influences the subjects decision) and "expectancy" (the prime leads the subject to generate an expectancy set of potential target to the prime). These processes can be observed whatever the SOA for the former and with long SOA for the later, but both with only high related word percentage and explicit memory instructions. Studies evaluating semantic priming effects in schizophrenia show conflicting results: schizophrenic patients can present hyperpriming (semantic priming effect is larger in patients than in controls), hypopriming (semantic priming effect is lower in patients than in controls) or equal semantic priming effects compared to control subjects. These results could be associated to a global impairment of controlled processes in schizophrenia, essentially to a dysfunction of semantic matching process. On the other hand, efficiency of semantic automatic spreading activation process is controversial. These discrepancies could be linked to the different experimental conditions used (duration of SOA, proportion of related pairs and instructions), which influence on the degree of involvement of controlled processes and therefore prevent to really assess its functioning. In addition, manipulations of the relation between prime and target (semantic distance, type of semantic relation and strength of semantic relation) seem to influence reaction times. However, the relation between prime and target (mediated priming) frequently used could not be the most relevant relation to understand the way of spreading of activation in semantic network in patients with schizophrenia. Finally, patients with formal thought disorders present particularly high priming effects relative to controls. These abnormal semantic priming effects could reflect a dysfunction of automatic spreading activation process and consequently an exaggerated diffusion of activation in the semantic network. In the future, the inclusion of different groups schizophrenic subjects could allow us to determine whether semantic memory disorders are pathognomonic or specific of a particular group of patients with schizophrenia.

Levels of processing and picture memory: the physical superiority effect.

PubMed

Intraub, H; Nicklos, S

1985-04-01

Six experiments studied the effect of physical orienting questions (e.g., "Is this angular?") and semantic orienting questions (e.g., "Is this edible?") on memory for unrelated pictures at stimulus durations ranging from 125-2,000 ms. Results ran contrary to the semantic superiority "rule of thumb," which is based primarily on verbal memory experiments. Physical questions were associated with better free recall and cued recall of a diverse set of visual scenes (Experiments 1, 2, and 4). This occurred both when general and highly specific semantic questions were used (Experiments 1 and 2). Similar results were obtained when more simplistic visual stimuli--photographs of single objects--were used (Experiments 5 and 6). As in the case of the semantic superiority effect with words, the physical superiority effect for pictures was eliminated or reversed when the same physical questions were repeated throughout the session (Experiments 4 and 6). Conflicts with results of previous levels of processing experiments with words and nonverbal stimuli (e.g., faces) are explained in terms of the sensory-semantic model (Nelson, Reed, & McEvoy, 1977). Implications for picture memory research and the levels of processing viewpoint are discussed.

Frontal lobe damage impairs process and content in semantic memory: evidence from category-specific effects in progressive non-fluent aphasia.

PubMed

Reilly, Jamie; Rodriguez, Amy D; Peelle, Jonathan E; Grossman, Murray

2011-06-01

Portions of left inferior frontal cortex have been linked to semantic memory both in terms of the content of conceptual representation (e.g., motor aspects in an embodied semantics framework) and the cognitive processes used to access these representations (e.g., response selection). Progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by progressive atrophy of left inferior frontal cortex. PNFA can, therefore, provide a lesion model for examining the impact of frontal lobe damage on semantic processing and content. In the current study we examined picture naming in a cohort of PNFA patients across a variety of semantic categories. An embodied approach to semantic memory holds that sensorimotor features such as self-initiated action may assume differential importance for the representation of manufactured artifacts (e.g., naming hand tools). Embodiment theories might therefore predict that patients with frontal damage would be differentially impaired on manufactured artifacts relative to natural kinds, and this prediction was borne out. We also examined patterns of naming errors across a wide range of semantic categories and found that naming error distributions were heterogeneous. Although PNFA patients performed worse overall on naming manufactured artifacts, there was no reliable relationship between anomia and manipulability across semantic categories. These results add to a growing body of research arguing against a purely sensorimotor account of semantic memory, suggesting instead a more nuanced balance of process and content in how the brain represents conceptual knowledge. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

Dynamic memory searches: Selective output interference for the memory of facts.

PubMed

Aue, William R; Criss, Amy H; Prince, Melissa A

2015-12-01

The benefits of testing on later memory performance are well documented; however, the manner in which testing harms memory performance is less well understood. This research is concerned with the finding that accuracy decreases over the course of testing, a phenomena termed "output interference" (OI). OI has primarily been investigated with episodic memory, but there is limited research investigating OI in measures of semantic memory (i.e., knowledge). In the current study, participants were twice tested for their knowledge of factual questions; they received corrective feedback during the first test. No OI was observed during the first test, when participants presumably searched semantic memory to answer the general-knowledge questions. During the second test, OI was observed. Conditional analyses of Test 2 performance revealed that OI was largely isolated to questions answered incorrectly during Test 1. These were questions for which participants needed to rely on recent experience (i.e., the feedback in episodic memory) to respond correctly. One possible explanation is that episodic memory is more susceptible to the sort of interference generated during testing (e.g., gradual changes in context, encoding/updating of items) relative to semantic memory. Alternative explanations are considered.

Personal semantics: Is it distinct from episodic and semantic memory? An electrophysiological study of memory for autobiographical facts and repeated events in honor of Shlomo Bentin.

PubMed

Renoult, Louis; Tanguay, Annick; Beaudry, Myriam; Tavakoli, Paniz; Rabipour, Sheida; Campbell, Kenneth; Moscovitch, Morris; Levine, Brian; Davidson, Patrick S R

2016-03-01

Declarative memory is thought to consist of two independent systems: episodic and semantic. Episodic memory represents personal and contextually unique events, while semantic memory represents culturally-shared, acontextual factual knowledge. Personal semantics refers to aspects of declarative memory that appear to fall somewhere in between the extremes of episodic and semantic. Examples include autobiographical knowledge and memories of repeated personal events. These two aspects of personal semantics have been studied little and rarely compared to both semantic and episodic memory. We recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) of 27 healthy participants while they verified the veracity of sentences probing four types of questions: general (i.e., semantic) facts, autobiographical facts, repeated events, and unique (i.e., episodic) events. Behavioral results showed equivalent reaction times in all 4 conditions. True sentences were verified faster than false sentences, except for unique events for which no significant difference was observed. Electrophysiological results showed that the N400 (which is classically associated with retrieval from semantic memory) was maximal for general facts and the LPC (which is classically associated with retrieval from episodic memory) was maximal for unique events. For both ERP components, the two personal semantic conditions (i.e., autobiographical facts and repeated events) systematically differed from semantic memory. In addition, N400 amplitudes also differentiated autobiographical facts from unique events. Autobiographical facts and repeated events did not differ significantly from each other but their corresponding scalp distributions differed from those associated with general facts. Our results suggest that the neural correlates of personal semantics can be distinguished from those of semantic and episodic memory, and may provide clues as to how unique events are transformed to semantic memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Similarities and Differences Between Working Memory and Long-Term Memory: Evidence From the Levels-of-Processing Span Task

PubMed Central

Rose, Nathan S.; Myerson, Joel; Roediger, Henry L.; Hale, Sandra

2010-01-01

Two experiments compared the effects of depth of processing on working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) using a levels-of-processing (LOP) span task, a newly developed WM span procedure that involves processing to-be-remembered words based on their visual, phonological, or semantic characteristics. Depth of processing had minimal effect on WM tests, yet subsequent memory for the same items on delayed tests showed the typical benefits of semantic processing. Although the difference in LOP effects demonstrates a dissociation between WM and LTM, we also found that the retrieval practice provided by recalling words on the WM task benefited long-term retention, especially for words initially recalled from supraspan lists. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that WM span tasks involve retrieval from secondary memory, but the LOP dissociation suggests the processes engaged by WM and LTM tests may differ. Therefore, similarities and differences between WM and LTM depend on the extent to which retrieval from secondary memory is involved and whether there is a match (or mismatch) between initial processing and subsequent retrieval, consistent with transfer-appropriate-processing theory. PMID:20192543

Semantic and episodic memory in children with temporal lobe epilepsy: do they relate to literacy skills?

PubMed

Lah, Suncica; Smith, Mary Lou

2014-01-01

Children with temporal lobe epilepsy are at risk for deficits in new learning (episodic memory) and literacy skills. Semantic memory deficits and double dissociations between episodic and semantic memory have recently been found in this patient population. In the current study we investigate whether impairments of these 2 distinct memory systems relate to literacy skills. 57 children with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy completed tests of verbal memory (episodic and semantic) and literacy skills (reading and spelling accuracy, and reading comprehension). For the entire group, semantic memory explained over 30% of variance in each of the literacy domains. Episodic memory explained a significant, but rather small proportion (< 10%) of variance in reading and spelling accuracy, but not in reading comprehension. Moreover, when children with opposite patterns of specific memory impairments (intact semantic/impaired episodic, intact episodic/impaired semantic) were compared, significant reductions in literacy skills were evident only in children with semantic memory impairments, but not in children with episodic memory impairments relative to the norms and to children with temporal lobe epilepsy who had intact memory. Our study provides the first evidence for differential relations between episodic and semantic memory impairments and literacy skills in children with temporal lobe epilepsy. As such, it highlights the urgent need to consider semantic memory deficits in management of children with temporal lobe epilepsy and undertake further research into the nature of reading difficulties of children with semantic memory impairments.

Episodic memory, semantic memory, and amnesia.

PubMed

Squire, L R; Zola, S M

1998-01-01

Episodic memory and semantic memory are two types of declarative memory. There have been two principal views about how this distinction might be reflected in the organization of memory functions in the brain. One view, that episodic memory and semantic memory are both dependent on the integrity of medial temporal lobe and midline diencephalic structures, predicts that amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe/diencephalic damage should be proportionately impaired in both episodic and semantic memory. An alternative view is that the capacity for semantic memory is spared, or partially spared, in amnesia relative to episodic memory ability. This article reviews two kinds of relevant data: 1) case studies where amnesia has occurred early in childhood, before much of an individual's semantic knowledge has been acquired, and 2) experimental studies with amnesic patients of fact and event learning, remembering and knowing, and remote memory. The data provide no compelling support for the view that episodic and semantic memory are affected differently in medial temporal lobe/diencephalic amnesia. However, episodic and semantic memory may be dissociable in those amnesic patients who additionally have severe frontal lobe damage.

Developmental roots of episodic memory.

PubMed

Nelson, Katherine

2018-01-01

Two arguments imply that Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) functional theory is insufficient as an explanation of episodic memory: (1) The developmental course supports a different social cultural division of episodic and semantic memory, and (2) the existence of long-term autobiographical memory is not explained in the functional theory but can be seen in a broader cultural framework.

The functional neuroanatomy of verbal memory in Alzheimer's disease: [18F]-Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) correlates of recency and recognition memory.

PubMed

Staffaroni, Adam M; Melrose, Rebecca J; Leskin, Lorraine P; Riskin-Jones, Hannah; Harwood, Dylan; Mandelkern, Mark; Sultzer, David L

2017-09-01

The objective of this study was to distinguish the functional neuroanatomy of verbal learning and recognition in Alzheimer's disease (AD) using the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) Word Learning task. In 81 Veterans diagnosed with dementia due to AD, we conducted a cluster-based correlation analysis to assess the relationships between recency and recognition memory scores from the CERAD Word Learning Task and cortical metabolic activity measured using [ 18 F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). AD patients (Mini-Mental State Examination, MMSE mean = 20.2) performed significantly better on the recall of recency items during learning trials than of primacy and middle items. Recency memory was associated with cerebral metabolism in the left middle and inferior temporal gyri and left fusiform gyrus (p < .05 at the corrected cluster level). In contrast, recognition memory was correlated with metabolic activity in two clusters: (a) a large cluster that included the left hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, entorhinal cortex, anterior temporal lobe, and inferior and middle temporal gyri; (b) the bilateral orbitofrontal cortices (OFC). The present study further informs our understanding of the disparate functional neuroanatomy of recency memory and recognition memory in AD. We anticipated that the recency effect would be relatively preserved and associated with temporoparietal brain regions implicated in short-term verbal memory, while recognition memory would be associated with the medial temporal lobe and possibly the OFC. Consistent with our a priori hypotheses, list learning in our AD sample was characterized by a reduced primacy effect and a relatively spared recency effect; however, recency memory was associated with cerebral metabolism in inferior and lateral temporal regions associated with the semantic memory network, rather than regions associated with short-term verbal memory. The correlates of recognition memory included the medial temporal lobe and OFC, replicating prior studies.

Effects of Interactive Vocabulary Instruction on the Vocabulary Learning and Reading Comprehension of Junior-High Learning Disabled Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bos, Candace S.; Anders, Patricia L.

1990-01-01

The study, involving 61 learning-disabled junior high students, compared the short-term and long-term effectiveness of definition instruction with interactive vocabulary strategies (semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and semantic/syntactic feature analysis). Students participating in the interactive strategies demonstrated greater…

Two retrievals from a single cue: A bottleneck persists across episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Orscheschek, Franziska; Strobach, Tilo; Schubert, Torsten; Rickard, Timothy

2018-05-01

There is evidence in the literature that two retrievals from long-term memory cannot occur in parallel. To date, however, that work has explored only the case of two retrievals from newly acquired episodic memory. These studies demonstrated a retrieval bottleneck even after dual-retrieval practice. That retrieval bottleneck may be a global property of long-term memory retrieval, or it may apply only to the case of two retrievals from episodic memory. In the current experiments, we explored whether that apparent dual-retrieval bottleneck applies to the case of one retrieval from episodic memory and one retrieval from highly overlearned semantic memory. Across three experiments, subjects learned to retrieve a left or right keypress response form a set of 14 unique word cues (e.g., black-right keypress). In addition, they learned a verbal response which involved retrieving the antonym of the presented cue (e.g., black-"white"). In the dual-retrieval condition, subjects had to retrieve both the keypress response and the antonym word. The results suggest that the retrieval bottleneck is superordinate to specific long-term memory systems and holds across different memory components. In addition, the results support the assumption of a cue-level response chunking account of learned retrieval parallelism.

Assessment and treatment of short-term and working memory impairments in stroke aphasia: a practical tutorial.

PubMed

Salis, Christos; Kelly, Helen; Code, Chris

2015-01-01

Aphasia following stroke refers to impairments that affect the comprehension and expression of spoken and/or written language, and co-occurring cognitive deficits are common. In this paper we focus on short-term and working memory impairments that impact on the ability to retain and manipulate auditory-verbal information. Evidence from diverse paradigms (large group studies, case studies) report close links between short-term/working memory and language functioning in aphasia. This evidence leads to the hypothesis that treating such memory impairments would improve language functioning. This link has only recently been acknowledged in aphasia treatment but has not been embraced widely by clinicians. To examine the association between language, and short-term and working memory impairments in aphasia. To describe practical ways of assessing short-term and working memory functioning that could be used in clinical practice. To discuss and critically appraise treatments of short-term and working memory reported in the literature. Taking a translational research approach, this paper provides clinicians with current evidence from the literature and practical information on how to assess and treat short-term and working memory impairments in people with aphasia. Published treatments of short-term and/or working memory in post-stroke aphasia are discussed through a narrative review. This paper provides the following. A theoretical rationale for adopting short-term and working memory treatments in aphasia. It highlights issues in differentially diagnosing between short-term, working memory disorders and other concomitant impairments, e.g. apraxia of speech. It describes short-term and working memory assessments with practical considerations for use with people with aphasia. It also offers a description of published treatments in terms of participants, treatments and outcomes. Finally, it critically appraises the current evidence base relating to the treatment of short-term and working memory treatments. The links between short-term/working memory functioning and language in aphasia are generally acknowledged. These strongly indicate the need to incorporate assessment of short-term/working memory functioning for people with aphasia. While the supportive evidence for treatment is growing and appears to highlight the benefits of including short-term/working memory in aphasia treatment, the quality of the evidence in its current state is poor. However, because of the clinical needs of people with aphasia and the prevalence of short-term/working memory impairments, incorporating related treatments through practice-based evidence is advocated. © 2015 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

The self-imagination effect: benefits of a self-referential encoding strategy on cued recall in memory-impaired individuals with neurological damage.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D; Glisky, Elizabeth L

2011-09-01

Knowledge of oneself is preserved in many memory-impaired individuals with neurological damage. Therefore, cognitive strategies that capitalize on mechanisms related to the self may be particularly effective at enhancing memory in this population. The present study investigated the effect of "self-imagining," imagining an event from a personal perspective, on short and long delayed cued recall in memory-impaired individuals with neurological damage. Sixteen patients intentionally encoded word pairs under four separate conditions: visual imagery, semantic elaboration, other person imagining, and self-imagining. The results revealed that self-imagining led to better performance than other-imagining, semantic elaboration, and visual imagery. Furthermore, the "self-imagination effect" (SIE) was preserved after a 30-min delay and was independent of memory functioning. These findings indicate that self-imagining provides a mnemonic advantage in brain-injured individuals, even those with relatively poor memory functioning, and suggest that self-imagining may tap into mnemonic mechanisms related to the self.

Strategic search from long-term memory: an examination of semantic and autobiographical recall.

PubMed

Unsworth, Nash; Brewer, Gene A; Spillers, Gregory J

2014-01-01

Searching long-term memory is theoretically driven by both directed (search strategies) and random components. In the current study we conducted four experiments evaluating strategic search in semantic and autobiographical memory. Participants were required to generate either exemplars from the category of animals or the names of their friends for several minutes. Self-reported strategies suggested that participants typically relied on visualization strategies for both tasks and were less likely to rely on ordered strategies (e.g., alphabetic search). When participants were instructed to use particular strategies, the visualization strategy resulted in the highest levels of performance and the most efficient search, whereas ordered strategies resulted in the lowest levels of performance and fairly inefficient search. These results are consistent with the notion that retrieval from long-term memory is driven, in part, by search strategies employed by the individual, and that one particularly efficient strategy is to visualize various situational contexts that one has experienced in the past in order to constrain the search and generate the desired information.

The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory

PubMed Central

Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L.; Nee, Derek Evan; Lustig, Cindy A.; Berman, Marc G.; Moore, Katherine Sledge

2014-01-01

The past 10 years have brought near-revolutionary changes in psychological theories about short-term memory, with similarly great advances in the neurosciences. Here, we critically examine the major psychological theories (the “mind”) of short-term memory and how they relate to evidence about underlying brain mechanisms. We focus on three features that must be addressed by any satisfactory theory of short-term memory. First, we examine the evidence for the architecture of short-term memory, with special attention to questions of capacity and how—or whether—short-term memory can be separated from long-term memory. Second, we ask how the components of that architecture enact processes of encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Third, we describe the debate over the reason about forgetting from short-term memory, whether interference or decay is the cause. We close with a conceptual model tracing the representation of a single item through a short-term memory task, describing the biological mechanisms that might support psychological processes on a moment-by-moment basis as an item is encoded, maintained over a delay with some forgetting, and ultimately retrieved. PMID:17854286

Remote memory in a patient with amnesia due to hypoxia.

PubMed

Beatty, W W; Salmon, D P; Bernstein, N; Butters, N

1987-08-01

It has been suggested that amnesic patients suffer a selective loss of episodic memory while semantic memory remains well preserved. To assess the validity of this idea we studied remote memory in an amnesic patient, (M.R.L.), using several different measures that differ in the extent to which they engage episodic or semantic memory. On two different versions of the Albert et al. (1979) remote memory battery M.R.L. displayed severe retrograde amnesia (RA) extending backwards in time for about 15 years with excellent preservation of older memories. With standard recall instructions his overall performance on the Crovitz test of autobiographical memory was impaired and all of M.R.L.'s specific, temporally dated memories were given from the first half of his life. When asked to reconstruct his past residential history in detail, M.R.L. provide specific and generally accurate information for residences occupied from his boyhood until 1970, but thereafter his memory became quite unreliable. On a test of knowledge of terms commonly employed in the surveying profession, in which he worked for the past 20 years, M.R.L.'s performance was also impaired. The consistent pattern of RA displayed by this patient on all of the tests of remote memory indicates that both episodic and semantic memory are impaired in amnesia.

Neural correlates of remembering/knowing famous people: an event-related fMRI study.

PubMed

Denkova, Ekaterina; Botzung, Anne; Manning, Lilianne

2006-01-01

It has been suggested that knowledge about some famous people depends on both a generic semantic component and an autobiographical component [Westmacott, R., & Moscovitch, M. (2003). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory. Memory and Cognition, 31, 761-774]. The neuropsychological studies of semantic dementia (SD) and Alzheimer disease (AD) demonstrated that the two aspects are very likely to be mediated by different brain structures, with the episodic component being highly dependent upon the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) [Westmacott, R., Black, S. E., Freedman, M., & Moscovitch, M. (2004). The contribution of autobiographical significance to semantic memory: Evidence from Alzheimer's disease, semantic dementia, and amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 42, 25-48]. Using an fMRI design in healthy participants, we aimed: (i) to investigate the pattern of brain activations sustaining the autobiographical and the semantic aspects of knowledge about famous persons. Moreover, (ii) we examined if the stimulus material (face/name) influences the lateralisation of the cerebral networks. Our findings suggested that different patterns of activation corresponded to the presence or absence of personal significance linked to semantic knowledge; MTL was engaged only in the former case. Although choice of stimulus material did not influence the hemispheric lateralisation in "classical" terms, it did play a role in engaging different cerebral regions.

Long-term associative learning predicts verbal short-term memory performance.

PubMed

Jones, Gary; Macken, Bill

2018-02-01

Studies using tests such as digit span and nonword repetition have implicated short-term memory across a range of developmental domains. Such tests ostensibly assess specialized processes for the short-term manipulation and maintenance of information that are often argued to enable long-term learning. However, there is considerable evidence for an influence of long-term linguistic learning on performance in short-term memory tasks that brings into question the role of a specialized short-term memory system separate from long-term knowledge. Using natural language corpora, we show experimentally and computationally that performance on three widely used measures of short-term memory (digit span, nonword repetition, and sentence recall) can be predicted from simple associative learning operating on the linguistic environment to which a typical child may have been exposed. The findings support the broad view that short-term verbal memory performance reflects the application of long-term language knowledge to the experimental setting.

Effects of semantic relatedness on recall of stimuli preceding emotional oddballs.

PubMed

Smith, Ryan M; Beversdorf, David Q

2008-07-01

Semantic and episodic memory networks function as highly interconnected systems, both relying on the hippocampal/medial temporal lobe complex (HC/MTL). Episodic memory encoding triggers the retrieval of semantic information, serving to incorporate contextual relationships between the newly acquired memory and existing semantic representations. While emotional material augments episodic memory encoding at the time of stimulus presentation, interactions between emotion and semantic memory that contribute to subsequent episodic recall are not well understood. Using a modified oddball task, we examined the modulatory effects of negative emotion on semantic interactions with episodic memory by measuring the free-recall of serially presented neutral or negative words varying in semantic relatedness. We found increased free-recall for words related to and preceding emotionally negative oddballs, suggesting that negative emotion can indirectly facilitate episodic free-recall by enhancing semantic contributions during encoding. Our findings demonstrate the ability of emotion and semantic memory to interact to mutually enhance free-recall.

Verbal short-term memory in individuals with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion: specific deficit in serial order retention capacities?

PubMed

Majerus, Steve; Van der Linden, Martial; Braissand, Vérane; Eliez, Stephan

2007-03-01

Many researchers have recently explored the cognitive profile of velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), a neurodevelopmental disorder linked to a 22q11.2 deletion. However, verbal short-term memory has not yet been systematically investigated. We explored verbal short-term memory abilities in a group of 11 children and adults presenting with VCFS and two control groups, matched on either CA or vocabulary knowledge, by distinguishing short-term memory for serial order and item information. The VCFS group showed impaired performance on the serial order short-term memory tasks compared to both control groups. Relative to the vocabulary-matched control group, item short-term memory was preserved. The implication of serial order short-term memory deficits on other aspects of cognitive development in VCFS (e.g., language development, numerical cognition) is discussed.

Hippocampal activation during retrieval of spatial context from episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Hoscheidt, Siobhan M; Nadel, Lynn; Payne, Jessica; Ryan, Lee

2010-10-15

The hippocampus, a region implicated in the processing of spatial information and episodic memory, is central to the debate concerning the relationship between episodic and semantic memory. Studies of medial temporal lobe amnesic patients provide evidence that the hippocampus is critical for the retrieval of episodic but not semantic memory. On the other hand, recent neuroimaging studies of intact individuals report hippocampal activation during retrieval of both autobiographical memories and semantic information that includes historical facts, famous faces, and categorical information, suggesting that episodic and semantic memory may engage the hippocampus during memory retrieval in similar ways. Few studies have matched episodic and semantic tasks for the degree to which they include spatial content, even though spatial content may be what drives hippocampal activation during semantic retrieval. To examine this issue, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which retrieval of spatial and nonspatial information was compared during an episodic and semantic recognition task. Results show that the hippocampus (1) participates preferentially in the retrieval of episodic memories; (2) is also engaged by retrieval of semantic memories, particularly those that include spatial information. These data suggest that sharp dissociations between episodic and semantic memory may be overly simplistic and that the hippocampus plays a role in the retrieval of spatial content whether drawn from a memory of one's own life experiences or real-world semantic knowledge. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Personal semantics: at the crossroads of semantic and episodic memory.

PubMed

Renoult, Louis; Davidson, Patrick S R; Palombo, Daniela J; Moscovitch, Morris; Levine, Brian

2012-11-01

Declarative memory is usually described as consisting of two systems: semantic and episodic memory. Between these two poles, however, may lie a third entity: personal semantics (PS). PS concerns knowledge of one's past. Although typically assumed to be an aspect of semantic memory, it is essentially absent from existing models of knowledge. Furthermore, like episodic memory (EM), PS is idiosyncratically personal (i.e., not culturally-shared). We show that, depending on how it is operationalized, the neural correlates of PS can look more similar to semantic memory, more similar to EM, or dissimilar to both. We consider three different perspectives to better integrate PS into existing models of declarative memory and suggest experimental strategies for disentangling PS from semantic and episodic memory. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Presentation Format and List Length on Children's False Memories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swannell, Ellen R.; Dewhurst, Stephen A.

2013-01-01

The effect of list length on children's false memories was investigated using list and story versions of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure. Short (7 items) and long (14 items) sequences of semantic associates were presented to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years old either in lists or embedded within a story that emphasized the list theme.…

Continuous video coherence computing model for detecting scene boundaries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kang, Hang-Bong

2001-07-01

The scene boundary detection is important in the semantic understanding of video data and is usually determined by coherence between shots. To measure the coherence, two approaches have been proposed. One is a discrete approach and the other one is a continuous approach. In this paper, we use the continuous approach and propose some modifications on the causal First-In-First-Out(FIFO) short-term memory-based model. One modification is that we allow dynamic memory size in computing coherence reliably regardless of the size of each shot. Another modification is that some shots can be removed from the memory buffer not by the FIFO rule. These removed shots have no or small foreground objects. Using this model, we detect scene boundaries by computing shot coherence. In computing coherence, we add one new term which is the number of intermediate shots between two comparing shots because the effect of intermediate shots is important in computing shot recall. In addition, we also consider shot activity because this is important to reflect human perception. We experiment our computing model on different genres of videos and have obtained reasonable results.

The general/specific breakdown of semantic memory and the nature of superordinate knowledge: insights from superordinate and basic-level feature norms.

PubMed

Marques, J Frederico

2007-12-01

The deterioration of semantic memory usually proceeds from more specific to more general superordinate categories, although rarer cases of superordinate knowledge impairment have also been reported. The nature of superordinate knowledge and the explanation of these two semantic impairments were evaluated from the analysis of superordinate and basic-level feature norms. The results show that, in comparison to basic-level concepts, superordinate concepts are not generally less informative and have similar feature distinctiveness and proportion of individual sensory features, but their features are less shared by their members. Results are in accord with explanations based on feature connection weights and/or concept confusability for the superordinate advantage cases. Results especially support an explanation for superordinate impairments in terms of higher semantic control requirements as related to features being less shared between concept members. Implications for patients with semantic impairments are also discussed.

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

Depletion of Serotonin Selectively Impairs Short-Term Memory without Affecting Long-Term Memory in Odor Learning in the Terrestrial Slug "Limax Valentianus"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santa, Tomofumi; Kirino, Yutaka; Watanabe, Satoshi; Shirahata, Takaaki; Tsunoda, Makoto

2006-01-01

The terrestrial slug "Limax" is able to acquire short-term and long-term memories during aversive odor-taste associative learning. We investigated the effect of the selective serotonergic neurotoxin 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine (5,7-DHT) on memory. Behavioral studies indicated that 5,7-DHT impaired short-term memory but not long-term memory. HPLC…

Semantic Congruence Accelerates the Onset of the Neural Signals of Successful Memory Encoding.

PubMed

Packard, Pau A; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Bunzeck, Nico; Nicolás, Berta; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Fuentemilla, Lluís

2017-01-11

As the stream of experience unfolds, our memory system rapidly transforms current inputs into long-lasting meaningful memories. A putative neural mechanism that strongly influences how input elements are transformed into meaningful memory codes relies on the ability to integrate them with existing structures of knowledge or schemas. However, it is not yet clear whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding. In the current investigation, we examined the encoding-dependent nature of this phenomenon in humans. We showed that actively integrating words with congruent semantic information provided by a category cue enhances memory for words and increases false recall. The memory effect of such active integration with congruent information was robust, even with an interference task occurring right after each encoding word list. In addition, via electroencephalography, we show in 2 separate studies that the onset of the neural signals of successful encoding appeared early (∼400 ms) during the encoding of congruent words. That the neural signals of successful encoding of congruent and incongruent information followed similarly ∼200 ms later suggests that this earlier neural response contributed to memory formation. We propose that the encoding of events that are congruent with readily available contextual semantics can trigger an accelerated onset of the neural mechanisms, supporting the integration of semantic information with the event input. This faster onset would result in a long-lasting and meaningful memory trace for the event but, at the same time, make it difficult to distinguish it from plausible but never encoded events (i.e., related false memories). Conceptual or schema congruence has a strong influence on long-term memory. However, the question of whether schema-related integration neural mechanisms occur during online encoding has yet to be clarified. We investigated the neural mechanisms reflecting how the active integration of words with congruent semantic categories enhances memory for words and increases false recall of semantically related words. We analyzed event-related potentials during encoding and showed that the onset of the neural signals of successful encoding appeared early (∼400 ms) during the encoding of congruent words. Our findings indicate that congruent events can trigger an accelerated onset of neural encoding mechanisms supporting the integration of semantic information with the event input. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/370291-11$15.00/0.

Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people.

PubMed

Gibson, Brett; Wasserman, Edward; Luck, Steven J

2011-10-01

Visual short-term memory plays a key role in guiding behavior, and individual differences in visual short-term memory capacity are strongly predictive of higher cognitive abilities. To provide a broader evolutionary context for understanding this memory system, we directly compared the behavior of pigeons and humans on a change detection task. Although pigeons had a lower storage capacity and a higher lapse rate than humans, both species stored multiple items in short-term memory and conformed to the same basic performance model. Thus, despite their very different evolutionary histories and neural architectures, pigeons and humans have functionally similar visual short-term memory systems, suggesting that the functional properties of visual short-term memory are subject to similar selective pressures across these distant species.

Working memory, short-term memory and reading proficiency in school-age children with cochlear implants.

PubMed

Bharadwaj, Sneha V; Maricle, Denise; Green, Laura; Allman, Tamby

2015-10-01

The objective of the study was to examine short-term memory and working memory through both visual and auditory tasks in school-age children with cochlear implants. The relationship between the performance on these cognitive skills and reading as well as language outcomes were examined in these children. Ten children between the ages of 7 and 11 years with early-onset bilateral severe-profound hearing loss participated in the study. Auditory and visual short-term memory, auditory and visual working memory subtests and verbal knowledge measures were assessed using the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV Integrated and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children II. Reading outcomes were assessed using the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test III. Performance on visual short-term memory and visual working memory measures in children with cochlear implants was within the average range when compared to the normative mean. However, auditory short-term memory and auditory working memory measures were below average when compared to the normative mean. Performance was also below average on all verbal knowledge measures. Regarding reading outcomes, children with cochlear implants scored below average for listening and passage comprehension tasks and these measures were positively correlated to visual short-term memory, visual working memory and auditory short-term memory. Performance on auditory working memory subtests was not related to reading or language outcomes. The children with cochlear implants in this study demonstrated better performance in visual (spatial) working memory and short-term memory skills than in auditory working memory and auditory short-term memory skills. Significant positive relationships were found between visual working memory and reading outcomes. The results of the study provide support for the idea that WM capacity is modality specific in children with hearing loss. Based on these findings, reading instruction that capitalizes on the strengths in visual short-term memory and working memory is suggested for young children with early-onset hearing loss. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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.

Dissociating the effects of semantic grouping and rehearsal strategies on event-related brain potentials.

PubMed

Schleepen, T M J; Markus, C R; Jonkman, L M

2014-12-01

The application of elaborative encoding strategies during learning, such as grouping items on similar semantic categories, increases the likelihood of later recall. Previous studies have suggested that stimuli that encourage semantic grouping strategies had modulating effects on specific ERP components. However, these studies did not differentiate between ERP activation patterns evoked by elaborative working memory strategies like semantic grouping and more simple strategies like rote rehearsal. Identification of neurocognitive correlates underlying successful use of elaborative strategies is important to understand better why certain populations, like children or elderly people, have problems applying such strategies. To compare ERP activation during the application of elaborative versus more simple strategies subjects had to encode either four semantically related or unrelated pictures by respectively applying a semantic category grouping or a simple rehearsal strategy. Another goal was to investigate if maintenance of semantically grouped vs. ungrouped pictures modulated ERP-slow waves differently. At the behavioral level there was only a semantic grouping benefit in terms of faster responding on correct rejections (i.e. when the memory probe stimulus was not part of the memory set). At the neural level, during encoding semantic grouping only had a modest specific modulatory effect on a fronto-central Late Positive Component (LPC), emerging around 650 ms. Other ERP components (i.e. P200, N400 and a second Late Positive Component) that had been earlier related to semantic grouping encoding processes now showed stronger modulation by rehearsal than by semantic grouping. During maintenance semantic grouping had specific modulatory effects on left and right frontal slow wave activity. These results stress the importance of careful control of strategy use when investigating the neural correlates of elaborative encoding. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effects of refreshing and elaboration on working memory performance, and their contributions to long-term memory formation.

PubMed

Bartsch, Lea M; Singmann, Henrik; Oberauer, Klaus

2018-03-19

Refreshing and elaboration are cognitive processes assumed to underlie verbal working-memory maintenance and assumed to support long-term memory formation. Whereas refreshing refers to the attentional focussing on representations, elaboration refers to linking representations in working memory into existing semantic networks. We measured the impact of instructed refreshing and elaboration on working and long-term memory separately, and investigated to what extent both processes are distinct in their contributions to working as well as long-term memory. Compared with a no-processing baseline, immediate memory was improved by repeating the items, but not by refreshing them. There was no credible effect of elaboration on working memory, except when items were repeated at the same time. Long-term memory benefited from elaboration, but not from refreshing the words. The results replicate the long-term memory benefit for elaboration, but do not support its beneficial role for working memory. Further, refreshing preserves immediate memory, but does not improve it beyond the level achieved without any processing.

Free Recall of Word Lists under Total Sleep Deprivation and after Recovery Sleep

PubMed Central

de Almeida Valverde Zanini, Gislaine; Tufik, Sérgio; Andersen, Monica Levy; da Silva, Raquel Cristina Martins; Bueno, Orlando Francisco Amodeo; Rodrigues, Camila Cruz; Pompéia, Sabine

2012-01-01

Study Objectives: One task that has been used to assess memory effects of prior total sleep deprivation (TSD) is the immediate free recall of word lists; however, results have been mixed. A possible explanation for this is task impurity, since recall of words from different serial positions reflects use of distinct types of memory (last words: short-term memory; first and intermediate words: episodic memory). Here we studied the effects of 2 nights of TSD on immediate free recall of semantically unrelated word lists considering the serial position curve. Design: Random allocation to a 2-night TSD protocol followed by one night of recovery sleep or to a control group. Setting: Study conducted under continuous behavioral monitoring. Participants: 24 young, healthy male volunteers. Intervention: 2 nights of total sleep deprivation (TSD) and one night of recovery sleep. Measurements and Results: Participants were shown five 15 unrelated word-lists at baseline, after one and 2 nights of TSD, and after one night of recovery sleep. We also investigated the development of recall strategies (learning) and susceptibility to interference from previous lists. No free recall impairment occurred during TSD, irrespective of serial position. Interference was unchanged. Both groups developed recall strategies, but task learning occurred earlier in controls and was evident in the TSD group only after sleep recovery. Conclusion: Prior TSD spared episodic memory, short-term phonological memory, and interference, allowed the development of recall strategies, but may have decreased the advantage of using these strategies, which returned to normal after recovery sleep. Citation: Zanini GAV; Tufik S; Andersen ML; da Silva RCM; Bueno OFA; Rodrigues CC; Pompéia S. Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep. SLEEP 2012;35(2):223-230. PMID:22294812

Verbal Short-Term Memory Span in Speech-Disordered Children: Implications for Articulatory Coding in Short-Term Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raine, Adrian; And Others

1991-01-01

Children with speech disorders had lower short-term memory capacity and smaller word length effect than control children. Children with speech disorders also had reduced speech-motor activity during rehearsal. Results suggest that speech rate may be a causal determinant of verbal short-term memory capacity. (BC)

Ordered short-term memory differs in signers and speakers: Implications for models of short-term memory

PubMed Central

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers (Boutla, Supalla, Newport, & Bavelier, 2004). Here, we test the hypothesis that this population difference reflects differences in the way speakers and signers maintain temporal order information in short-term memory. We show that native signers differ from speakers on measures of short-term memory that require maintenance of temporal order of the tested materials, but not on those in which temporal order is not required. In addition, we show that, in a recall task with free order, bilingual subjects are more likely to recall in temporal order when using English than ASL. We conclude that speakers and signers do share common short-term memory processes. However, whereas short-term memory for spoken English is predominantly organized in terms of temporal order, we argue that this dimension does not play as great a role in signers’ short-term memory. Other factors that may affect STM processes in signers are discussed. PMID:18083155

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories

PubMed Central

Chadwick, Martin J.; Anjum, Raeesa S.; Kumaran, Dharshan; Schacter, Daniel L.; Spiers, Hugo J.; Hassabis, Demis

2016-01-01

Recent advances in neuroscience have given us unprecedented insight into the neural mechanisms of false memory, showing that artificial memories can be inserted into the memory cells of the hippocampus in a way that is indistinguishable from true memories. However, this alone is not enough to explain how false memories can arise naturally in the course of our daily lives. Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that many instances of false memory, both in the laboratory and the real world, can be attributed to semantic interference. Whereas previous studies have found that a diverse set of regions show some involvement in semantic false memory, none have revealed the nature of the semantic representations underpinning the phenomenon. Here we use fMRI with representational similarity analysis to search for a neural code consistent with semantic false memory. We find clear evidence that false memories emerge from a similarity-based neural code in the temporal pole, a region that has been called the “semantic hub” of the brain. We further show that each individual has a partially unique semantic code within the temporal pole, and this unique code can predict idiosyncratic patterns of memory errors. Finally, we show that the same neural code can also predict variation in true-memory performance, consistent with an adaptive perspective on false memory. Taken together, our findings reveal the underlying structure of neural representations of semantic knowledge, and how this semantic structure can both enhance and distort our memories. PMID:27551087

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories.

PubMed

Chadwick, Martin J; Anjum, Raeesa S; Kumaran, Dharshan; Schacter, Daniel L; Spiers, Hugo J; Hassabis, Demis

2016-09-06

Recent advances in neuroscience have given us unprecedented insight into the neural mechanisms of false memory, showing that artificial memories can be inserted into the memory cells of the hippocampus in a way that is indistinguishable from true memories. However, this alone is not enough to explain how false memories can arise naturally in the course of our daily lives. Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that many instances of false memory, both in the laboratory and the real world, can be attributed to semantic interference. Whereas previous studies have found that a diverse set of regions show some involvement in semantic false memory, none have revealed the nature of the semantic representations underpinning the phenomenon. Here we use fMRI with representational similarity analysis to search for a neural code consistent with semantic false memory. We find clear evidence that false memories emerge from a similarity-based neural code in the temporal pole, a region that has been called the "semantic hub" of the brain. We further show that each individual has a partially unique semantic code within the temporal pole, and this unique code can predict idiosyncratic patterns of memory errors. Finally, we show that the same neural code can also predict variation in true-memory performance, consistent with an adaptive perspective on false memory. Taken together, our findings reveal the underlying structure of neural representations of semantic knowledge, and how this semantic structure can both enhance and distort our memories.

Can Survival Processing Enhance Story Memory? Testing the Generalizability of the Adaptive Memory Framework

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seamon, John G.; Bohn, Justin M.; Coddington, Inslee E.; Ebling, Maritza C.; Grund, Ethan M.; Haring, Catherine T.; Jang, Sue-Jung; Kim, Daniel; Liong, Christopher; Paley, Frances M.; Pang, Luke K.; Siddique, Ashik H.

2012-01-01

Research from the adaptive memory framework shows that thinking about words in terms of their survival value in an incidental learning task enhances their free recall relative to other semantic encoding strategies and intentional learning (Nairne, Pandeirada, & Thompson, 2008). We found similar results. When participants used incidental…

Physical exercise prevents short and long-term deficits on aversive and recognition memory and attenuates brain oxidative damage induced by maternal deprivation.

PubMed

Neves, Ben-Hur; Menezes, Jefferson; Souza, Mauren Assis; Mello-Carpes, Pâmela B

2015-12-01

It is known from previous research that physical exercise prevents long-term memory deficits induced by maternal deprivation in rats. But we could not assume similar effects of physical exercise on short-term memory, as short- and long-term memories are known to result from some different memory consolidation processes. Here we demonstrated that, in addition to long-term memory deficit, the short-term memory deficit resultant from maternal deprivation in object recognition and aversive memory tasks is also prevented by physical exercise. Additionally, one of the mechanisms by which the physical exercise influences the memory processes involves its effects attenuating the oxidative damage in the maternal deprived rats' hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

The role of short-term memory impairment in nonword repetition, real word repetition, and nonword decoding: A case study.

PubMed

Peter, Beate

2018-01-01

In a companion study, adults with dyslexia and adults with a probable history of childhood apraxia of speech showed evidence of difficulty with processing sequential information during nonword repetition, multisyllabic real word repetition and nonword decoding. Results suggested that some errors arose in visual encoding during nonword reading, all levels of processing but especially short-term memory storage/retrieval during nonword repetition, and motor planning and programming during complex real word repetition. To further investigate the role of short-term memory, a participant with short-term memory impairment (MI) was recruited. MI was confirmed with poor performance during a sentence repetition and three nonword repetition tasks, all of which have a high short-term memory load, whereas typical performance was observed during tests of reading, spelling, and static verbal knowledge, all with low short-term memory loads. Experimental results show error-free performance during multisyllabic real word repetition but high counts of sequence errors, especially migrations and assimilations, during nonword repetition, supporting short-term memory as a locus of sequential processing deficit during nonword repetition. Results are also consistent with the hypothesis that during complex real word repetition, short-term memory is bypassed as the word is recognized and retrieved from long-term memory prior to producing the word.

Learning From Short Text Streams With Topic Drifts.

PubMed

Li, Peipei; He, Lu; Wang, Haiyan; Hu, Xuegang; Zhang, Yuhong; Li, Lei; Wu, Xindong

2017-09-18

Short text streams such as search snippets and micro blogs have been popular on the Web with the emergence of social media. Unlike traditional normal text streams, these data present the characteristics of short length, weak signal, high volume, high velocity, topic drift, etc. Short text stream classification is hence a very challenging and significant task. However, this challenge has received little attention from the research community. Therefore, a new feature extension approach is proposed for short text stream classification with the help of a large-scale semantic network obtained from a Web corpus. It is built on an incremental ensemble classification model for efficiency. First, more semantic contexts based on the senses of terms in short texts are introduced to make up of the data sparsity using the open semantic network, in which all terms are disambiguated by their semantics to reduce the noise impact. Second, a concept cluster-based topic drifting detection method is proposed to effectively track hidden topic drifts. Finally, extensive studies demonstrate that as compared to several well-known concept drifting detection methods in data stream, our approach can detect topic drifts effectively, and it enables handling short text streams effectively while maintaining the efficiency as compared to several state-of-the-art short text classification approaches.

Musical and verbal semantic memory: two distinct neural networks?

PubMed

Groussard, M; Viader, F; Hubert, V; Landeau, B; Abbas, A; Desgranges, B; Eustache, F; Platel, H

2010-02-01

Semantic memory has been investigated in numerous neuroimaging and clinical studies, most of which have used verbal or visual, but only very seldom, musical material. Clinical studies have suggested that there is a relative neural independence between verbal and musical semantic memory. In the present study, "musical semantic memory" is defined as memory for "well-known" melodies without any knowledge of the spatial or temporal circumstances of learning, while "verbal semantic memory" corresponds to general knowledge about concepts, again without any knowledge of the spatial or temporal circumstances of learning. Our aim was to compare the neural substrates of musical and verbal semantic memory by administering the same type of task in each modality. We used high-resolution PET H(2)O(15) to observe 11 young subjects performing two main tasks: (1) a musical semantic memory task, where the subjects heard the first part of familiar melodies and had to decide whether the second part they heard matched the first, and (2) a verbal semantic memory task with the same design, but where the material consisted of well-known expressions or proverbs. The musical semantic memory condition activated the superior temporal area and inferior and middle frontal areas in the left hemisphere and the inferior frontal area in the right hemisphere. The verbal semantic memory condition activated the middle temporal region in the left hemisphere and the cerebellum in the right hemisphere. We found that the verbal and musical semantic processes activated a common network extending throughout the left temporal neocortex. In addition, there was a material-dependent topographical preference within this network, with predominantly anterior activation during musical tasks and predominantly posterior activation during semantic verbal tasks. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Insensitivity of visual short-term memory to irrelevant visual information.

PubMed

Andrade, Jackie; Kemps, Eva; Werniers, Yves; May, Jon; Szmalec, Arnaud

2002-07-01

Several authors have hypothesized that visuo-spatial working memory is functionally analogous to verbal working memory. Irrelevant background speech impairs verbal short-term memory. We investigated whether irrelevant visual information has an analogous effect on visual short-term memory, using a dynamic visual noise (DVN) technique known to disrupt visual imagery (Quinn & McConnell, 1996b). Experiment I replicated the effect of DVN on pegword imagery. Experiments 2 and 3 showed no effect of DVN on recall of static matrix patterns, despite a significant effect of a concurrent spatial tapping task. Experiment 4 showed no effect of DVN on encoding or maintenance of arrays of matrix patterns, despite testing memory by a recognition procedure to encourage visual rather than spatial processing. Serial position curves showed a one-item recency effect typical of visual short-term memory. Experiment 5 showed no effect of DVN on short-term recognition of Chinese characters, despite effects of visual similarity and a concurrent colour memory task that confirmed visual processing of the characters. We conclude that irrelevant visual noise does not impair visual short-term memory. Visual working memory may not be functionally analogous to verbal working memory, and different cognitive processes may underlie visual short-term memory and visual imagery.

Semantic processes leading to true and false memory formation in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Paz-Alonso, Pedro M; Ghetti, Simona; Ramsay, Ian; Solomon, Marjorie; Yoon, Jong; Carter, Cameron S; Ragland, J Daniel

2013-07-01

Encoding semantic relationships between items on word lists (semantic processing) enhances true memories, but also increases memory distortions. Episodic memory impairments in schizophrenia (SZ) are strongly driven by failures to process semantic relations, but the exact nature of these relational semantic processing deficits is not well understood. Here, we used a false memory paradigm to investigate the impact of implicit and explicit semantic processing manipulations on episodic memory in SZ. Thirty SZ and 30 demographically matched healthy controls (HC) studied Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists of semantically associated words. Half of the lists had strong implicit semantic associations and the remainder had low strength associations. Similarly, half of the lists were presented under "standard" instructions and the other half under explicit "relational processing" instructions. After study, participants performed recall and old/new recognition tests composed of targets, critical lures, and unrelated lures. HC exhibited higher true memories and better discriminability between true and false memory compared to SZ. High, versus low, associative strength increased false memory rates in both groups. However, explicit "relational processing" instructions positively improved true memory rates only in HC. Finally, true and false memory rates were associated with severity of disorganized and negative symptoms in SZ. These results suggest that reduced processing of semantic relationships during encoding in SZ may stem from an inability to implement explicit relational processing strategies rather than a fundamental deficit in the implicit activation and retrieval of word meanings from patients' semantic lexicon. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia.

PubMed

Irish, Muireann; Addis, Donna Rose; Hodges, John R; Piguet, Olivier

2012-07-01

Semantic dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative condition characterized by the profound and amodal loss of semantic memory in the context of relatively preserved episodic memory. In contrast, patients with Alzheimer's disease typically display impairments in episodic memory, but with semantic deficits of a much lesser magnitude than in semantic dementia. Our understanding of episodic memory retrieval in these cohorts has greatly increased over the last decade, however, we know relatively little regarding the ability of these patients to imagine and describe possible future events, and whether episodic future thinking is mediated by divergent neural substrates contingent on dementia subtype. Here, we explored episodic future thinking in patients with semantic dementia (n=11) and Alzheimer's disease (n=11), in comparison with healthy control participants (n=10). Participants completed a battery of tests designed to probe episodic and semantic thinking across past and future conditions, as well as standardized tests of episodic and semantic memory. Further, all participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Despite their relatively intact episodic retrieval for recent past events, the semantic dementia cohort showed significant impairments for episodic future thinking. In contrast, the group with Alzheimer's disease showed parallel deficits across past and future episodic conditions. Voxel-based morphometry analyses confirmed that atrophy in the left inferior temporal gyrus and bilateral temporal poles, regions strongly implicated in semantic memory, correlated significantly with deficits in episodic future thinking in semantic dementia. Conversely, episodic future thinking performance in Alzheimer's disease correlated with atrophy in regions associated with episodic memory, namely the posterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus and frontal pole. These distinct neuroanatomical substrates contingent on dementia group were further qualified by correlational analyses that confirmed the relation between semantic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in semantic dementia, in contrast with the role of episodic memory deficits and episodic future thinking in Alzheimer's disease. Our findings demonstrate that semantic knowledge is critical for the construction of novel future events, providing the necessary scaffolding into which episodic details can be integrated. Further research is necessary to elucidate the precise contribution of semantic memory to future thinking, and to explore how deficits in self-projection manifest on behavioural and social levels in different dementia subtypes.

In Search of Decay in Verbal Short-Term Memory

PubMed Central

Berman, Marc G.; Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L.

2014-01-01

Is forgetting in the short term due to decay with the mere passage of time, interference from other memoranda, or both? Past research on short-term memory has revealed some evidence for decay and a plethora of evidence showing that short-term memory is worsened by interference. However, none of these studies has directly contrasted decay and interference in short-term memory in a task that rules out the use of rehearsal processes. In this article the authors present a series of studies using a novel paradigm to address this problem directly, by interrogating the operation of decay and interference in short-term memory without rehearsal confounds. The results of these studies indicate that short-term memories are subject to very small decay effects with the mere passage of time but that interference plays a much larger role in their degradation. The authors discuss the implications of these results for existing models of memory decay and interference. PMID:19271849

In search of decay in verbal short-term memory.

PubMed

Berman, Marc G; Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L

2009-03-01

Is forgetting in the short term due to decay with the mere passage of time, interference from other memoranda, or both? Past research on short-term memory has revealed some evidence for decay and a plethora of evidence showing that short-term memory is worsened by interference. However, none of these studies has directly contrasted decay and interference in short-term memory in a task that rules out the use of rehearsal processes. In this article the authors present a series of studies using a novel paradigm to address this problem directly, by interrogating the operation of decay and interference in short-term memory without rehearsal confounds. The results of these studies indicate that short-term memories are subject to very small decay effects with the mere passage of time but that interference plays a much larger role in their degradation. The authors discuss the implications of these results for existing models of memory decay and interference. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

The effect of visual arrangement on visuospatial short-term memory: Insights from children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

PubMed

Attout, Lucie; Noël, Marie-Pascale; Rousselle, Laurence

2018-04-11

Recent models of visuospatial (VSSP) short-term memory postulate the existence of two dissociable mechanisms depending on whether VSSP information is presented simultaneously or sequentially. However, they do not specify to what extent VSSP short-term memory is under the influence of general VSSP processing. This issue was examined in people with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, a genetic condition involving a VSSP deficit. The configuration of VSSP information was manipulated (structured vs. unstructured) to explore the impact of arrangement on VSSP short-term memory. Two presentation modes were used to see whether the VSSP arrangement has the same impact on simultaneous and sequential short-term memory. Compared to children matched on chronological age, children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome showed impaired performance only for structured arrangement, regardless of the presentation mode, suggesting an influence of VSSP processing on VSSP short-term memory abilities. A revised cognitive architecture for a model of VSSP short-term memory is proposed.

[Physiopathology of autobiographical memory in aging: episodic and semantic distinction, clinical findings and neuroimaging studies].

PubMed

Piolino, Pascale; Martinelli, Pénélope; Viard, Armelle; Noulhiane, Marion; Eustache, Francis; Desgranges, Béatrice

2010-01-01

From an early age, autobiographical memory models our feeling of identity and continuity. It grows throughout lifetime with our experiences and is built up from general self-knowledge and specific memories. The study of autobiographical memory depicts the dynamic and reconstructive features of this type of long-term memory, combining both semantic and episodic aspects, its strength and fragility. In this article, we propose to illustrate the properties of autobiographical memory from the field of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging research through the analysis of the mechanisms of disturbance in normal and Alzheimer's disease. We show that the cognitive and neural bases of autobiographical memory are distinct in both cases. In normal aging, autobiographical memory retrieval is mainly dependent on frontal/executive function and on sense of reexperiencing specific context connected to hippocampal regions regardless of memory remoteness. In Alzheimer's disease, autobiographical memory deficit, characterized by a Ribot's temporal gradient, is connected to different regions according to memory remoteness. Our functional neuroimaging results suggest that patients at the early stage can compensate for their massive deficit of episodic recent memories correlated to hippocampal alteration with over general remote memories related to prefrontal regions. On the whole, the research findings allowed initiating new autobiographical memory studies by comparing normal and pathological aging and developing cognitive methods of memory rehabilitation in patients based on preserved personal semantic capacity. © Société de Biologie, 2010.

A Latent Variable Analysis of Working Memory Capacity, Short-Term Memory Capacity, Processing Speed, and General Fluid Intelligence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conway, Andrew R. A.; Cowan, Nelsin; Bunting, Michael F.; Therriault, David J.; Minkoff, Scott R. B.

2002-01-01

Studied the interrelationships among general fluid intelligence, short-term memory capacity, working memory capacity, and processing speed in 120 young adults and used structural equation modeling to determine the best predictor of general fluid intelligence. Results suggest that working memory capacity, but not short-term memory capacity or…

Transmodal comparison of auditory, motor, and visual post-processing with and without intentional short-term memory maintenance.

PubMed

Bender, Stephan; Behringer, Stephanie; Freitag, Christine M; Resch, Franz; Weisbrod, Matthias

2010-12-01

To elucidate the contributions of modality-dependent post-processing in auditory, motor and visual cortical areas to short-term memory. We compared late negative waves (N700) during the post-processing of single lateralized stimuli which were separated by long intertrial intervals across the auditory, motor and visual modalities. Tasks either required or competed with attention to post-processing of preceding events, i.e. active short-term memory maintenance. N700 indicated that cortical post-processing exceeded short movements as well as short auditory or visual stimuli for over half a second without intentional short-term memory maintenance. Modality-specific topographies pointed towards sensory (respectively motor) generators with comparable time-courses across the different modalities. Lateralization and amplitude of auditory/motor/visual N700 were enhanced by active short-term memory maintenance compared to attention to current perceptions or passive stimulation. The memory-related N700 increase followed the characteristic time-course and modality-specific topography of the N700 without intentional memory-maintenance. Memory-maintenance-related lateralized negative potentials may be related to a less lateralised modality-dependent post-processing N700 component which occurs also without intentional memory maintenance (automatic memory trace or effortless attraction of attention). Encoding to short-term memory may involve controlled attention to modality-dependent post-processing. Similar short-term memory processes may exist in the auditory, motor and visual systems. Copyright © 2010 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mapping the Structure of Semantic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morais, Ana Sofia; Olsson, Henrik; Schooler, Lael J.

2013-01-01

Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual's semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals…

Semantic memory and depressive symptoms in patients with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Lehrner, J; Coutinho, G; Mattos, P; Moser, D; Pflüger, M; Gleiss, A; Auff, E; Dal-Bianco, P; Pusswald, G; Stögmann, E

2017-07-01

Semantic memory may be impaired in clinically recognized states of cognitive impairment. We investigated the relationship between semantic memory and depressive symptoms (DS) in patients with cognitive impairment. 323 cognitively healthy controls and 848 patients with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia were included. Semantic knowledge for famous faces, world capitals, and word vocabulary was investigated. Compared to healthy controls, we found a statistically significant difference of semantic knowledge in the MCI groups and the AD group, respectively. Results of the SCD group were mixed. However, two of the three semantic memory measures (world capitals and word vocabulary) showed a significant association with DS. We found a difference in semantic memory performance in MCI and AD as well as an association with DS. Results suggest that the difference in semantic memory is due to a storage loss rather than to a retrieval problem.

Recovery of an injured cingulum concurrent with improvement of short-term memory in a patient with mild traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Jang, Sung Ho; Kim, Seong Ho; Seo, Jeong Pyo

2018-01-01

We reported on a patient with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) who showed recovery of an injured cingulum concurrent with improvement of short-term memory, which was demonstrated on follow-up diffusion tensor tractography (DTT). A 55-year-old male patient suffered head trauma resulting from falling from approximately 2 m while working at a construction site. The patient showed mild memory impairment (especially short-term memory impairment) at 3 months after onset: Memory Assessment Scale (global memory: 95 (37%ile), short-term memory: 75 (5%ile), verbal memory: 80 (9%ile) and visual memory: 112 (79%ile)). By contrast, at 2 years after onset, his mild memory impairment had improved to a normal state: Memory Assessment Scale (global memory: 104 (61%ile), short-term memory: 95 (37%ile), verbal memory: 101 (53%ile) and visual memory: 106 (66%ile)). On 3-month DTT, discontinuation of the right anterior cingulum was observed over the genu of the corpus callosum, while on 2-year DTT, the discontinued right anterior cingulum was elongated to the right basal forebrain. In conclusion, recovery of an injured cingulum concurrent with improvement of short-term memory was demonstrated in a patient with mild TBI.

Short term memory for single surface features and bindings in ageing: A replication study.

PubMed

Isella, Valeria; Molteni, Federica; Mapelli, Cristina; Ferrarese, Carlo

2015-06-01

In the present study we replicated a previous experiment investigating visuo-spatial short term memory binding in young and older healthy individuals, in the attempt to verify the pattern of impairment that can be observed in normal elderly for short term memory for single items vs short term memory for bindings. Assessing a larger sample size (25 young and 25 older subjects), using a more appropriate measure of accuracy for a change detection task (A'), and adding the evaluation of speed of performance, we confirmed that old normals show a decline in short term memory for bindings of shape and colour that is of comparable extent, and not major, to the decline in memory for single shapes and single colours. The absence of a specific deficit of short term memory for conjunctions of surface features seems to distinguish cognitive ageing from Alzheimer's Disease. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Temporal lobe surgery in childhood and neuroanatomical predictors of long-term declarative memory outcome

PubMed Central

Skirrow, Caroline; Cross, J. Helen; Harrison, Sue; Cormack, Francesca; Harkness, William; Coleman, Rosie; Meierotto, Ellen; Gaiottino, Johanna; Vargha-Khadem, Faraneh

2015-01-01

The temporal lobes play a prominent role in declarative memory function, including episodic memory (memory for events) and semantic memory (memory for facts and concepts). Surgical resection for medication-resistant and well-localized temporal lobe epilepsy has good prognosis for seizure freedom, but is linked to memory difficulties in adults, especially when the removal is on the left side. Children may benefit most from surgery, because brain plasticity may facilitate post-surgical reorganization, and seizure cessation may promote cognitive development. However, the long-term impact of this intervention in children is not known. We examined memory function in 53 children (25 males, 28 females) who were evaluated for epilepsy surgery: 42 underwent unilateral temporal lobe resections (25 left, 17 right, mean age at surgery 13.8 years), 11 were treated only pharmacologically. Average follow-up was 9 years (range 5–15). Post-surgical change in visual and verbal episodic memory, and semantic memory at follow-up were examined. Pre- and post-surgical T1-weighted MRI brain scans were analysed to extract hippocampal and resection volumes, and evaluate post-surgical temporal lobe integrity. Language lateralization indices were derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging. There were no significant pre- to postoperative decrements in memory associated with surgery. In contrast, gains in verbal episodic memory were seen after right temporal lobe surgery, and visual episodic memory improved after left temporal lobe surgery, indicating a functional release in the unoperated temporal lobe after seizure reduction or cessation. Pre- to post-surgical change in memory function was not associated with any indices of brain structure derived from MRI. However, better verbal memory at follow-up was linked to greater post-surgical residual hippocampal volumes, most robustly in left surgical participants. Better semantic memory at follow-up was associated with smaller resection volumes and greater temporal pole integrity after left temporal surgery. Results were independent of post-surgical intellectual function and language lateralization. Our findings indicate post-surgical, hemisphere-dependent material-specific improvement in memory functions in the intact temporal lobe. However, outcome was linked to the anatomical integrity of the temporal lobe memory system, indicating that compensatory mechanisms are constrained by the amount of tissue which remains in the operated temporal lobe. Careful tailoring of resections for children undergoing epilepsy surgery may enhance long-term memory outcome. PMID:25392199

Episodic and Semantic Aspects of Memory for Prose.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dooling, D. James

This report describes research on Bartlett's theory of constructive memory. In experiment one, schematic retention is related to Tulving's distinction between episodic and semantic memory. With the passage of time, memory for prose reflects decreasing output from episodic memory and increasing output from semantic memory. In experiment two,…

Relatedness Proportion Effects in Semantic Categorization: Reconsidering the Automatic Spreading Activation Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Wit, Bianca; Kinoshita, Sachiko

2014-01-01

Semantic priming effects at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony are commonly explained in terms of an automatic spreading activation process. According to this view, the proportion of related trials should have no impact on the size of the semantic priming effect. Using a semantic categorization task ("Is this a living…

The Hippocampus Remains Activated over the Long Term for the Retrieval of Truly Episodic Memories

PubMed Central

Harand, Caroline; Bertran, Françoise; La Joie, Renaud; Landeau, Brigitte; Mézenge, Florence; Desgranges, Béatrice; Peigneux, Philippe; Eustache, Francis; Rauchs, Géraldine

2012-01-01

The role of the hippocampus in declarative memory consolidation is a matter of intense debate. We investigated the neural substrates of memory retrieval for recent and remote information using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 18 young, healthy participants learned a series of pictures. Then, during two fMRI recognition sessions, 3 days and 3 months later, they had to determine whether they recognized or not each picture using the “Remember/Know” procedure. Presentation of the same learned images at both delays allowed us to track the evolution of memories and distinguish consistently episodic memories from those that were initially episodic and then became familiar or semantic over time and were retrieved without any contextual detail. Hippocampal activation decreased over time for initially episodic, later semantic memories, but remained stable for consistently episodic ones, at least in its posterior part. For both types of memories, neocortical activations were observed at both delays, notably in the ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices. These activations may reflect a gradual reorganization of memory traces within neural networks. Our data indicate maintenance and strengthening of hippocampal and cortico-cortical connections in the consolidation and retrieval of episodic memories over time, in line with the Multiple Trace theory (Nadel and Moscovitch, 1997). At variance, memories becoming semantic over time consolidate through strengthening of cortico-cortical connections and progressive disengagement of the hippocampus. PMID:22937055

Sentence comprehension following moderate closed head injury in adults.

PubMed

Leikin, Mark; Ibrahim, Raphiq; Aharon-Peretz, Judith

2012-09-01

The current study explores sentence comprehension impairments among adults following moderate closed head injury. It was hypothesized that if the factor of syntactic complexity significantly affects sentence comprehension in these patients, it would testify to the existence of syntactic processing deficit along with working-memory problems. Thirty-six adults (18 closed head injury patients and 18 healthy controls matched in age, gender, and IQ) participated in the study. A picture-sentence matching task together with various tests for memory, language, and reading abilities were used to explore whether sentence comprehension impairments exist as a result of a deficit in syntactic processing or of working-memory dysfunction. Results indicate significant impairment in sentence comprehension among adults with closed head injury compared with their non-head-injured peers. Results also reveal that closed head injury patients demonstrate considerable decline in working memory, short-term memory, and semantic knowledge. Analysis of the results shows that memory impairment and syntactic complexity contribute significantly to sentence comprehension difficulties in closed head injury patients. At the same time, the presentation mode (spoken or written language) was found to have no effect on comprehension among adults with closed head injury, and their reading abilities appear to be relatively intact.

Anticholinergic drug use is associated with episodic memory decline in older adults without dementia.

PubMed

Papenberg, Goran; Bäckman, Lars; Fratiglioni, Laura; Laukka, Erika J; Fastbom, Johan; Johnell, Kristina

2017-07-01

Anticholinergic drug use is common in older adults and has been related to increased dementia risk. This suggests that users of these drugs may experience accelerated cognitive decline. So far, however, longitudinal data on this topic are absent and the available evidence is inconclusive with respect to effects on specific cognitive domains due to suboptimal control of confounding variables. We investigated whether anticholinergic medication use is associated with cognitive decline over 6 years in a population-based study of older adults (aged 60-90; n = 1473) without dementia. We found that users (n = 29) declined more on episodic memory over 6 years compared to nonusers (n = 1418). These results were independent of age, sex, education, overall drug intake, physical activity, depression, cardiovascular risk burden, and cardiovascular disease. By contrast, anticholinergic drug use was unrelated to performance in processing speed, semantic memory, short-term memory, verbal fluency, and global cognition (the Mini-Mental-State Examination). Our results suggest that effects of anticholinergics may be particularly detrimental to episodic memory in older adults, which supports the assertion that the cholinergic system plays an important role in episodic memory formation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Past, present, and prospects: Reflections 40 years on from the selective impairment of semantic memory (Warrington, 1975).

PubMed

McCarthy, Rosaleen A; Warrington, Elizabeth K

2016-10-01

We summarize the main findings and conclusions of Warrington's (1975) paper, The Selective Impairment of Semantic memory, a neuropsychological paper that described three cases with degenerative neurological conditions [Warrington, E. K. (1975). The selective impairment of semantic memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 635-657]. We consider the developments that have followed from its publication and give a selective overview of the field in 2014. The initial impact of the paper was on neuropsychological investigations of semantic loss followed some 14 years later by the identification of Semantic Dementia (the condition shown by the original cases) as a distinctive form of degenerative disease with unique clinical and pathological characteristics. We discuss the distinction between disorders of semantic storage and refractory semantic access, the evidence for category- and modality-specific impairments of semantics, and the light that has been shed on the structure and organization of semantic memory. Finally we consider the relationship between semantic memory and the skills of reading and writing, phonological processing, and autobiographical memory.

5W1H Information Extraction with CNN-Bidirectional LSTM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nurdin, A.; Maulidevi, N. U.

2018-03-01

In this work, information about who, did what, when, where, why, and how on Indonesian news articles were extracted by combining Convolutional Neural Network and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory. Convolutional Neural Network can learn semantically meaningful representations of sentences. Bidirectional LSTM can analyze the relations among words in the sequence. We also use word embedding word2vec for word representation. By combining these algorithms, we obtained F-measure 0.808. Our experiments show that CNN-BLSTM outperforms other shallow methods, namely IBk, C4.5, and Naïve Bayes with the F-measure 0.655, 0.645, and 0.595, respectively.

Task context and organization in free recall

PubMed Central

Polyn, Sean M.; Norman, Kenneth A.; Kahana, Michael J.

2009-01-01

Prior work on organization in free recall has focused on the ways in which semantic and temporal information determine the order in which material is retrieved from memory. Tulving’s theory of ecphory suggests that these organizational effects arise from the interaction of a retrieval cue with the contents of memory. Using the continual-distraction free-recall paradigm (Bjork & Whitten, 1974) to minimize retrieval during the study period, we show that encoding task context can organize recall, suggesting that task-related information is part of the retrieval cue. We interpret these results in terms of the Context Maintenance and Retrieval model (CMR; Polyn, Norman, & Kahana, in press), in which an internal contextual representation, containing semantic, temporal, and source-related information, serves as the retrieval cue and organizes the retrieval of information from memory. We discuss these results in terms of the guided activation theory (Miller & Cohen, 2001) of the role of prefrontal cortex in task performance, as well as the rich neuropsychological literature implicating prefrontal cortex in memory search (e.g, Schacter, 1987). PMID:19524086

Deficits in verbal long-term memory and learning in children with poor phonological short-term memory skills.

PubMed

Gathercole, Susan E; Briscoe, Josie; Thorn, Annabel; Tiffany, Claire

2008-03-01

Possible links between phonological short-term memory and both longer term memory and learning in 8-year-old children were investigated in this study. Performance on a range of tests of long-term memory and learning was compared for a group of 16 children with poor phonological short-term memory skills and a comparison group of children of the same age with matched nonverbal reasoning abilities but memory scores in the average range. The low-phonological-memory group were impaired on longer term memory and learning tasks that taxed memory for arbitrary verbal material such as names and nonwords. However, the two groups performed at comparable levels on tasks requiring the retention of visuo-spatial information and of meaningful material and at carrying out prospective memory tasks in which the children were asked to carry out actions at a future point in time. The results are consistent with the view that poor short-term memory function impairs the longer-term retention and ease of learning of novel verbal material.

A SEMantic and EPisodic Memory Test (SEMEP) Developed within the Embodied Cognition Framework: Application to Normal Aging, Alzheimer's Disease and Semantic Dementia.

PubMed

Vallet, Guillaume T; Hudon, Carol; Bier, Nathalie; Macoir, Joël; Versace, Rémy; Simard, Martine

2017-01-01

Embodiment has highlighted the importance of sensory-motor components in cognition. Perception and memory are thus very tightly bound together, and episodic and semantic memories should rely on the same grounded memory traces. Reduced perception should then directly reduce the ability to encode and retrieve an episodic memory, as in normal aging. Multimodal integration deficits, as in Alzheimer's disease, should lead to more severe episodic memory impairment. The present study introduces a new memory test developed to take into account these assumptions. The SEMEP (SEMantic-Episodic) memory test proposes to assess conjointly semantic and episodic knowledge across multiple tasks: semantic matching, naming, free recall, and recognition. The performance of young adults is compared to healthy elderly adults (HE), patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and patients with semantic dementia (SD). The results show specific patterns of performance between the groups. HE commit memory errors only for presented but not to be remembered items. AD patients present the worst episodic memory performance associated with intrusion errors (recall or recognition of items never presented). They were the only group to not benefit from a visual isolation (addition of a yellow background), a method known to increase the distinctiveness of the memory traces. Finally, SD patients suffer from the most severe semantic impairment. To conclude, confusion errors are common across all the elderly groups, whereas AD was the only group to exhibit regular intrusion errors and SD patients to show severe semantic impairment.

Developmental amnesia: a new pattern of dissociation with intact episodic memory.

PubMed

Temple, Christine M; Richardson, Paul

2004-01-01

A case of developmental amnesia is reported for a child, CL, of normal intelligence, who has intact episodic memory but impaired semantic memory for both semantic knowledge of facts and semantic knowledge of words, including general world knowledge, knowledge of word meanings and superordinate knowledge of words. In contrast to the deficits in semantic memory, there are no impairments in episodic memory for verbal or visual material, assessed by recall or recognition. Lexical decision was also intact, indicating impairment in semantic knowledge of vocabulary rather than absence of lexical representations. The case forms a double dissociation to the cases of Vargha-Khadem et al. [Science 277 (1997) 376; Episodic memory: new directions in research (2002) 153]; Gadian et al. [Brain 123 (2000) 499] for whom semantic memory was intact but episodic memory was impaired. This double dissociation suggests that semantic memory and episodic memory have the capacity to develop separately and supports models of modularity within memory development and a functional architecture for the developmental disorders within which there is residual normality rather than pervasive abnormality. Knowledge of arithmetical facts is also spared for CL, consistent with adult studies arguing for numeracy knowledge distinct from other semantics. Reading was characterised by difficulty with irregular words and homophones but intact reading of nonwords. CL has surface dyslexia with poor lexico-semantic reading skills but good phonological reading skills. The case was identified following screening from a population of normal schoolchildren suggesting that developmental amnesias may be more pervasive than has been recognised previously.

Differential Medial Temporal Lobe and Parietal Cortical Contributions to Real-world Autobiographical Episodic and Autobiographical Semantic Memory.

PubMed

Brown, Thackery I; Rissman, Jesse; Chow, Tiffany E; Uncapher, Melina R; Wagner, Anthony D

2018-04-18

Autobiographical remembering can depend on two forms of memory: episodic (event) memory and autobiographical semantic memory (remembering personally relevant semantic knowledge, independent of recalling a specific experience). There is debate about the degree to which the neural signals that support episodic recollection relate to or build upon autobiographical semantic remembering. Pooling data from two fMRI studies of memory for real-world personal events, we investigated whether medial temporal lobe (MTL) and parietal subregions contribute to autobiographical episodic and semantic remembering. During scanning, participants made memory judgments about photograph sequences depicting past events from their life or from others' lives, and indicated whether memory was based on episodic or semantic knowledge. Results revealed several distinct functional patterns: activity in most MTL subregions was selectively associated with autobiographical episodic memory; the hippocampal tail, superior parietal lobule, and intraparietal sulcus were similarly engaged when memory was based on retrieval of an autobiographical episode or autobiographical semantic knowledge; and angular gyrus demonstrated a graded pattern, with activity declining from autobiographical recollection to autobiographical semantic remembering to correct rejections of novel events. Collectively, our data offer insights into MTL and parietal cortex functional organization, and elucidate circuitry that supports different forms of real-world autobiographical memory.

Interdependence of episodic and semantic memory: evidence from neuropsychology.

PubMed

Greenberg, Daniel L; Verfaellie, Mieke

2010-09-01

Tulving's (1972) theory of memory draws a distinction between general knowledge (semantic memory) and memory for events (episodic memory). Neuropsychological studies have generally examined each type of memory in isolation, but theorists have long argued that these two forms of memory are interdependent. Here we review several lines of neuropsychological research that have explored the interdependence of episodic and semantic memory. The studies show that these forms of memory can affect each other both at encoding and at retrieval. We suggest that theories of memory should be revised to account for all of the interdependencies between episodic and semantic memory; they should also incorporate forms of memory that do not fit neatly into either category.

Interdependence of episodic and semantic memory: Evidence from neuropsychology

PubMed Central

GREENBERG, DANIEL L.; VERFAELLIE, MIEKE

2010-01-01

Tulving's (1972) theory of memory draws a distinction between general knowledge (semantic memory) and memory for events (episodic memory). Neuropsychological studies have generally examined each type of memory in isolation, but theorists have long argued that these two forms of memory are interdependent. Here we review several lines of neuropsychological research that have explored the interdependence of episodic and semantic memory. The studies show that these forms of memory can affect each other both at encoding and at retrieval. We suggest that theories of memory should be revised to account for all of the interdependencies between episodic and semantic memory; they should also incorporate forms of memory that do not fit neatly into either category. PMID:20561378

Verbal and non-verbal semantic impairment: From fluent primary progressive aphasia to semantic dementia

PubMed Central

Senaha, Mirna Lie Hosogi; Caramelli, Paulo; Porto, Claudia Sellitto; Nitrini, Ricardo

2007-01-01

Selective disturbances of semantic memory have attracted the interest of many investigators and the question of the existence of single or multiple semantic systems remains a very controversial theme in the literature. Objectives To discuss the question of multiple semantic systems based on a longitudinal study of a patient who presented semantic dementia from fluent primary progressive aphasia. Methods A 66 year-old woman with selective impairment of semantic memory was examined on two occasions, undergoing neuropsychological and language evaluations, the results of which were compared to those of three paired control individuals. Results In the first evaluation, physical examination was normal and the score on the Mini-Mental State Examination was 26. Language evaluation revealed fluent speech, anomia, disturbance in word comprehension, preservation of the syntactic and phonological aspects of the language, besides surface dyslexia and dysgraphia. Autobiographical and episodic memories were relatively preserved. In semantic memory tests, the following dissociation was found: disturbance of verbal semantic memory with preservation of non-verbal semantic memory. Magnetic resonance of the brain revealed marked atrophy of the left anterior temporal lobe. After 14 months, the difficulties in verbal semantic memory had become more severe and the semantic disturbance, limited initially to the linguistic sphere, had worsened to involve non-verbal domains. Conclusions Given the dissociation found in the first examination, we believe there is sufficient clinical evidence to refute the existence of a unitary semantic system. PMID:29213389

The Unintentional Memory Load in Tests for Young Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Margaret Hubbard

The validity of certain standardized tests may be affected by the short-term memory load therein and its relation to a child's short-term memory capacity. Factors of testing which increase a test's memory load and consequently interfere with comprehension are discussed. It is hypothesized that a test which strains the short-term memory capacity of…

Short-term memory and dual task performance

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Regan, J. E.

1982-01-01

Two hypotheses concerning the way in which short-term memory interacts with another task in a dual task situation are considered. It is noted that when two tasks are combined, the activity of controlling and organizing performance on both tasks simultaneously may compete with either task for a resource; this resource may be space in a central mechanism or general processing capacity or it may be some task-specific resource. If a special relationship exists between short-term memory and control, especially if there is an identity relationship between short-term and a central controlling mechanism, then short-term memory performance should show a decrement in a dual task situation. Even if short-term memory does not have any particular identity with a controlling mechanism, but both tasks draw on some common resource or resources, then a tradeoff between the two tasks in allocating resources is possible and could be reflected in performance. The persistent concurrence cost in memory performance in these experiments suggests that short-term memory may have a unique status in the information processing system.

Musicians have better memory than nonmusicians: A meta-analysis.

PubMed

Talamini, Francesca; Altoè, Gianmarco; Carretti, Barbara; Grassi, Massimo

2017-01-01

Several studies have found that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks, but this is not always the case, and the strength of this apparent advantage is unknown. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis with the aim of clarifying whether musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks. Education Source; PEP (WEB)-Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing; Psychology and Behavioral Science (EBSCO); PsycINFO (Ovid); PubMed; ScienceDirect-AllBooks Content (Elsevier API); SCOPUS (Elsevier API); SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCO) and Google Scholar were searched for eligible studies. The selected studies involved two groups of participants: young adult musicians and nonmusicians. All the studies included memory tasks (loading long-term, short-term or working memory) that contained tonal, verbal or visuospatial stimuli. Three meta-analyses were run separately for long-term memory, short-term memory and working memory. We collected 29 studies, including 53 memory tasks. The results showed that musicians performed better than nonmusicians in terms of long-term memory, g = .29, 95% CI (.08-.51), short-term memory, g = .57, 95% CI (.41-.73), and working memory, g = .56, 95% CI (.33-.80). To further explore the data, we included a moderator (the type of stimulus presented, i.e., tonal, verbal or visuospatial), which was found to influence the effect size for short-term and working memory, but not for long-term memory. In terms of short-term and working memory, the musicians' advantage was large with tonal stimuli, moderate with verbal stimuli, and small or null with visuospatial stimuli. The three meta-analyses revealed a small effect size for long-term memory, and a medium effect size for short-term and working memory, suggesting that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks. Moreover, the effect of the moderator suggested that, the type of stimuli influences this advantage.

Musicians have better memory than nonmusicians: A meta-analysis

PubMed Central

Altoè, Gianmarco; Carretti, Barbara; Grassi, Massimo

2017-01-01

Background Several studies have found that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks, but this is not always the case, and the strength of this apparent advantage is unknown. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis with the aim of clarifying whether musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks. Methods Education Source; PEP (WEB)—Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing; Psychology and Behavioral Science (EBSCO); PsycINFO (Ovid); PubMed; ScienceDirect—AllBooks Content (Elsevier API); SCOPUS (Elsevier API); SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCO) and Google Scholar were searched for eligible studies. The selected studies involved two groups of participants: young adult musicians and nonmusicians. All the studies included memory tasks (loading long-term, short-term or working memory) that contained tonal, verbal or visuospatial stimuli. Three meta-analyses were run separately for long-term memory, short-term memory and working memory. Results We collected 29 studies, including 53 memory tasks. The results showed that musicians performed better than nonmusicians in terms of long-term memory, g = .29, 95% CI (.08–.51), short-term memory, g = .57, 95% CI (.41–.73), and working memory, g = .56, 95% CI (.33–.80). To further explore the data, we included a moderator (the type of stimulus presented, i.e., tonal, verbal or visuospatial), which was found to influence the effect size for short-term and working memory, but not for long-term memory. In terms of short-term and working memory, the musicians’ advantage was large with tonal stimuli, moderate with verbal stimuli, and small or null with visuospatial stimuli. Conclusions The three meta-analyses revealed a small effect size for long-term memory, and a medium effect size for short-term and working memory, suggesting that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks. Moreover, the effect of the moderator suggested that, the type of stimuli influences this advantage. PMID:29049416

Presentation format effects in a levels-of-processing task.

PubMed

Foos, Paul W; Goolkasian, Paula

2008-01-01

Three experiments were conducted to examine better performance in long-term memory when stimulus items are pictures or spoken words compared to printed words. Hypotheses regarding the allocation of attention to printed words, the semantic link between pictures and processing, and a rich long-term representation for pictures were tested. Using levels-of-processing tasks eliminated format effects when no memory test was expected and processing was deep (El), and when study and test formats did not match (E3). Pictures produced superior performance when a memory test was expected (El & 2) and when study and test formats were the same (E3). Results of all experiments support the attenuation of attention model and that picture superiority is due to a more direct access to semantic processing and a richer visual code. General principles to guide the processing of stimulus information are discussed.

Retrograde amnesia in patients with hippocampal, medial temporal, temporal lobe, or frontal pathology.

PubMed

Bright, Peter; Buckman, Joseph; Fradera, Alex; Yoshimasu, Haruo; Colchester, Alan C F; Kopelman, Michael D

2006-01-01

There is considerable controversy concerning the theoretical basis of retrograde amnesia (R.A.). In the present paper, we compare medial temporal, medial plus lateral temporal, and frontal lesion patients on a new autobiographical memory task and measures of the more semantic aspects of memory (famous faces and news events). Only those patients with damage extending beyond the medial temporal cortex into the lateral temporal regions showed severe impairment on free recall remote memory tasks, and this held for both the autobiographical and the more semantic memory tests. However, on t-test analysis, the medial temporal group was impaired in retrieving recent autobiographical memories. Within the medial temporal group, those patients who had combined hippocampal and parahippocampal atrophy (H+) on quantified MRI performed somewhat worse on the semantic tasks than those with atrophy confined to the hippocampi (H-), but scores were very similar on autobiographical episodic recall. Correlational analyses with regional MRI volumes showed that lateral temporal volume was correlated significantly with performance on all three retrograde amnesia tests. The findings are discussed in terms of consolidation, reconsolidation, and multiple trace theory: We suggest that a widely distributed network of regions underlies the retrieval of past memories, and that the extent of lateral temporal damage appears to be critical to the emergence of a severe remote memory impairment.

Long-Term Interference at the Semantic Level: Evidence from Blocked-Cyclic Picture Matching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wei, Tao; Schnur, Tatiana T.

2016-01-01

Processing semantically related stimuli creates interference across various domains of cognition, including language and memory. In this study, we identify the locus and mechanism of interference when retrieving meanings associated with words and pictures. Subjects matched a probe stimulus (e.g., cat) to its associated target picture (e.g., yarn)…

The transience and nature of cognitive impairments in transient global amnesia: a meta-analysis.

PubMed

Jäger, Theodor; Bäzner, Hansjörg; Kliegel, Matthias; Szabo, Kristina; Hennerici, Michael G

2009-01-01

Transient global amnesia (TGA) is a clinical syndrome characterized by the sudden onset of severe amnesia without concomitant focal neurological symptoms. This meta-analysis of the cognitive characteristics of TGA addressed two main issues. First, we examined the hypothesis that the acute phase of TGA is associated with changes of anterograde and retrograde episodic long-term memory sparing semantic and short-term memory, while we had no clear prediction for potential reductions of executive functions due to the relative lack of previous studies addressing this issue. Second, we analyzed the time-course of changes in cognitive functions throughout three time intervals--acute (0-24 hours after TGA onset), postacute (24 hours to 5 days), and long-term phase (5-30 days)--to reveal whether there is a fast versus a delayed recovery. The results of the meta-analysis on 152 effect sizes from 25 studies showed that TGA is characterized by an extraordinarily large reduction of anterograde (d* = 1.89) and a somewhat milder reduction of retrograde (d* = 1.28) episodic long-term memory. Moreover, our results indicate the existence of additional, nonamnestic cognitive changes during TGA, because executive functions were also diminished (d* = 0.79). Reductions in both anterograde episodic long-term memory and executive function recover slowly, as slightly poorer performance in these cognitive domains can be found in the postacute phase (d*s = 0.32 and 0.44). All cognitive diminutions resolved within the long-term phase, by this calling into question previous reports of poorer performance of TGA patients relative to comparison subjects weeks or months after the attack.

Prefrontal θ-Burst Stimulation Disrupts the Organizing Influence of Active Short-Term Retrieval on Episodic Memory.

PubMed

Marin, Bianca M; VanHaerents, Stephen A; Voss, Joel L; Bridge, Donna J

2018-01-01

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is thought to organize items in working memory and this organizational role may also influence long-term memory. To causally test this hypothesized role of DLPFC in long-term memory formation, we used θ-burst noninvasive stimulation (TBS) to modulate DLPFC involvement in a memory task that assessed the influence of active short-term retrieval on later memory. Human subjects viewed three objects on a grid and then either actively retrieved or passively restudied one object's location after a brief delay. Long-term memory for the other objects was assessed after a delay to evaluate the beneficial role of active short-term retrieval on subsequent memory for the entire set of object locations. We found that DLPFC TBS had no significant effects on short-term memory. In contrast, DLPFC TBS impaired long-term memory selectively in the active-retrieval condition but not in the passive-restudy condition. These findings are consistent with the hypothesized contribution of DLPFC to the organizational processes operative during active short-term retrieval that influence long-term memory, although other regions that were not stimulated could provide similar contributions. Notably, active-retrieval and passive-restudy conditions were intermixed, and therefore nonspecific influences of stimulation were well controlled. These results suggest that DLPFC is causally involved in organizing event information during active retrieval to support coherent long-term memory formation.

Prefrontal θ-Burst Stimulation Disrupts the Organizing Influence of Active Short-Term Retrieval on Episodic Memory

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Abstract Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is thought to organize items in working memory and this organizational role may also influence long-term memory. To causally test this hypothesized role of DLPFC in long-term memory formation, we used θ-burst noninvasive stimulation (TBS) to modulate DLPFC involvement in a memory task that assessed the influence of active short-term retrieval on later memory. Human subjects viewed three objects on a grid and then either actively retrieved or passively restudied one object’s location after a brief delay. Long-term memory for the other objects was assessed after a delay to evaluate the beneficial role of active short-term retrieval on subsequent memory for the entire set of object locations. We found that DLPFC TBS had no significant effects on short-term memory. In contrast, DLPFC TBS impaired long-term memory selectively in the active-retrieval condition but not in the passive-restudy condition. These findings are consistent with the hypothesized contribution of DLPFC to the organizational processes operative during active short-term retrieval that influence long-term memory, although other regions that were not stimulated could provide similar contributions. Notably, active-retrieval and passive-restudy conditions were intermixed, and therefore nonspecific influences of stimulation were well controlled. These results suggest that DLPFC is causally involved in organizing event information during active retrieval to support coherent long-term memory formation. PMID:29445769

The ERP correlates of self-knowledge: Are assessments of one's past, present, and future traits closer to semantic or episodic memory?

PubMed

Tanguay, Annick N; Benton, Lauren; Romio, Lorenza; Sievers, Carolin; Davidson, Patrick S R; Renoult, Louis

2018-02-01

Self-knowledge concerns one's own preferences and personality. It pertains to the self (similar to episodic memory), yet does not concern events. It is factual (like semantic memory), but also idiosyncratic. For these reasons, it is unclear where self-knowledge might fall on a continuum in relation to semantic and episodic memory. In this study, we aimed to compare the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of self-knowledge to those of semantic and episodic memory, using N400 and Late Positive Component (LPC) as proxies for semantic and episodic processing, respectively. We considered an additional factor: time perspective. Temporally distant selves have been suggested to be more semantic compared to the present self, but thinking about one's past and future selves may also engage episodic memory. Twenty-eight adults answered whether traits (e.g., persistent) were true of most people holding an occupation (e.g., soldiers; semantic memory condition), or true of themselves 5 years ago, in the present, or 5 years from now (past, present, and future self-knowledge conditions). The study ended with an episodic recognition memory task for previously seen traits. Present self-knowledge produced mean LPC amplitudes at posterior parietal sites that fell between semantic and episodic memory. Mean LPC amplitudes for past and future self-knowledge were greater than for semantic memory, and not significantly different from episodic memory. Mean N400 amplitudes for the self-knowledge conditions were smaller than for semantic memory at sagittal sites. However, this N400 effect was not separable from a preceding P200 effect at these same electrode sites. This P200 effect can be interpreted as reflecting the greater emotional salience of self as compared to general knowledge, which may have facilitated semantic processing. Overall, our findings are consistent with a distinction between knowledge of others and self-knowledge, but the closeness of self-knowledge's neural correlates to either semantic or episodic memory appears to depend to some extent on time perspective. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Implementation and Assessment of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) Based Questions in an Electronic Homework and Testing System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Behmke, Derek A.; Atwood, Charles H.

2013-01-01

To a first approximation, human memory is divided into two parts, short-term and long-term. Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) attempts to minimize the short-term memory load while maximizing the memory available for transferring knowledge from short-term to long-term memory. According to CLT there are three types of load, intrinsic, extraneous, and…

Anisomycin Injection in Area CA3 of the Hippocampus Impairs Both Short-Term and Long-Term Memories of Contextual Fear

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Remaud, Jessica; Ceccom, Johnatan; Carponcy, Julien; Dugué, Laura; Menchon, Gregory; Pech, Stéphane; Halley, Helene; Francés, Bernard; Dahan, Lionel

2014-01-01

Protein synthesis is involved in the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory. Previous electrophysiological data concerning LTP in CA3 suggest that protein synthesis in that region might also be necessary for short-term memory. We tested this hypothesis by locally injecting the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin in hippocampal…

Recall from Semantic and Episodic Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gillund, Gary; Perlmutter, Marion

Although research in episodic recall memory, comparing younger and older adults, favors the younger adults, findings in semantic memory research are less consistent. To examine age differences in semantic and episodic memory recall, 72 young adults (mean age, 20.8) and 72 older adults (mean age 71) completed three memory tests under varied…

PKA increases in the olfactory bulb act as unconditioned stimuli and provide evidence for parallel memory systems: pairing odor with increased PKA creates intermediate- and long-term, but not short-term, memories.

PubMed

Grimes, Matthew T; Harley, Carolyn W; Darby-King, Andrea; McLean, John H

2012-02-21

Neonatal odor-preference memory in rat pups is a well-defined associative mammalian memory model dependent on cAMP. Previous work from this laboratory demonstrates three phases of neonatal odor-preference memory: short-term (translation-independent), intermediate-term (translation-dependent), and long-term (transcription- and translation-dependent). Here, we use neonatal odor-preference learning to explore the role of olfactory bulb PKA in these three phases of mammalian memory. PKA activity increased normally in learning animals 10 min after a single training trial. Inhibition of PKA by Rp-cAMPs blocked intermediate-term and long-term memory, with no effect on short-term memory. PKA inhibition also prevented learning-associated CREB phosphorylation, a transcription factor implicated in long-term memory. When long-term memory was rescued through increased β-adrenoceptor activation, CREB phosphorylation was restored. Intermediate-term and long-term, but not short-term odor-preference memories were generated by pairing odor with direct PKA activation using intrabulbar Sp-cAMPs, which bypasses β-adrenoceptor activation. Higher levels of Sp-cAMPs enhanced memory by extending normal 24-h retention to 48-72 h. These results suggest that increased bulbar PKA is necessary and sufficient for the induction of intermediate-term and long-term odor-preference memory, and suggest that PKA activation levels also modulate memory duration. However, short-term memory appears to use molecular mechanisms other than the PKA/CREB pathway. These mechanisms, which are also recruited by β-adrenoceptor activation, must operate in parallel with PKA activation.

Independence of long-term contextual memory and short-term perceptual hypotheses: Evidence from contextual cueing of interrupted search.

PubMed

Schlagbauer, Bernhard; Mink, Maurice; Müller, Hermann J; Geyer, Thomas

2017-02-01

Observers are able to resume an interrupted search trial faster relative to responding to a new, unseen display. This finding of rapid resumption is attributed to short-term perceptual hypotheses generated on the current look and confirmed upon subsequent looks at the same display. It has been suggested that the contents of perceptual hypotheses are similar to those of other forms of memory acquired long-term through repeated exposure to the same search displays over the course of several trials, that is, the memory supporting "contextual cueing." In three experiments, we investigated the relationship between short-term perceptual hypotheses and long-term contextual memory. The results indicated that long-term, contextual memory of repeated displays neither affected the generation nor the confirmation of short-term perceptual hypotheses for these displays. Furthermore, the analysis of eye movements suggests that long-term memory provides an initial benefit in guiding attention to the target, whereas in subsequent looks guidance is entirely based on short-term perceptual hypotheses. Overall, the results reveal a picture of both long- and short-term memory contributing to reliable performance gains in interrupted search, while exerting their effects in an independent manner.

The role of semantically related distractors during encoding and retrieval of words in long-term memory.

PubMed

Meade, Melissa E; Fernandes, Myra A

2016-07-01

We examined the influence of divided attention (DA) on recognition of words when the concurrent task was semantically related or unrelated to the to-be-recognised target words. Participants were asked to either study or retrieve a target list of semantically related words while simultaneously making semantic decisions (i.e., size judgements) to another set of related or unrelated words heard concurrently. We manipulated semantic relatedness of distractor to target words, and whether DA occurred during the encoding or retrieval phase of memory. Recognition accuracy was significantly diminished relative to full attention, following DA conditions at encoding, regardless of relatedness of distractors to study words. However, response times (RTs) were slower with related compared to unrelated distractors. Similarly, under DA at retrieval, recognition RTs were slower when distractors were semantically related than unrelated to target words. Unlike the effect from DA at encoding, recognition accuracy was worse under DA at retrieval when the distractors were related compared to unrelated to the target words. Results suggest that availability of general attentional resources is critical for successful encoding, whereas successful retrieval is particularly reliant on access to a semantic code, making it sensitive to related distractors under DA conditions.

Central executive involvement in children's spatial memory.

PubMed

Ang, Su Yin; Lee, Kerry

2008-11-01

Previous research with adults found that spatial short-term and working memory tasks impose similar demands on executive resources. We administered spatial short-term and working memory tasks to 8- and 11-year-olds in three separate experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 an executive suppression task (random number generation) was found to impair performances on a short-term memory task (Corsi blocks), a working memory task (letter rotation), and a spatial visualisation task (paper folding). In Experiment 3 an articulatory suppression task only impaired performance on the working memory task. These results suggest that short-term and working memory performances are dependent on executive resources. The degree to which the short-term memory task was dependent on executive resources was expected to be related to the amount of experience children have had with such tasks. Yet we found no significant age-related suppression effects. This was attributed to differences in employment of cognitive strategies by the older children.

In Search of Decay in Verbal Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berman, Marc G.; Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L.

2009-01-01

Is forgetting in the short term due to decay with the mere passage of time, interference from other memoranda, or both? Past research on short-term memory has revealed some evidence for decay and a plethora of evidence showing that short-term memory is worsened by interference. However, none of these studies has directly contrasted decay and…

Association between Early Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Symptoms and Current Verbal and Visuo-Spatial Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Enhanced long-term and impaired short-term spatial memory in GluA1 AMPA receptor subunit knockout mice: evidence for a dual-process memory model.

PubMed

Sanderson, David J; Good, Mark A; Skelton, Kathryn; Sprengel, Rolf; Seeburg, Peter H; Rawlins, J Nicholas P; Bannerman, David M

2009-06-01

The GluA1 AMPA receptor subunit is a key mediator of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and is especially important for a rapidly-induced, short-lasting form of potentiation. GluA1 gene deletion impairs hippocampus-dependent, spatial working memory, but spares hippocampus-dependent spatial reference memory. These findings may reflect the necessity of GluA1-dependent synaptic plasticity for short-term memory of recently visited places, but not for the ability to form long-term associations between a particular spatial location and an outcome. This hypothesis is in concordance with the theory that short-term and long-term memory depend on dissociable psychological processes. In this study we tested GluA1-/- mice on both short-term and long-term spatial memory using a simple novelty preference task. Mice were given a series of repeated exposures to a particular spatial location (the arm of a Y-maze) before their preference for a novel spatial location (the unvisited arm of the maze) over the familiar spatial location was assessed. GluA1-/- mice were impaired if the interval between the trials was short (1 min), but showed enhanced spatial memory if the interval between the trials was long (24 h). This enhancement was caused by the interval between the exposure trials rather than the interval prior to the test, thus demonstrating enhanced learning and not simply enhanced performance or expression of memory. This seemingly paradoxical enhancement of hippocampus-dependent spatial learning may be caused by GluA1 gene deletion reducing the detrimental effects of short-term memory on subsequent long-term learning. Thus, these results support a dual-process model of memory in which short-term and long-term memory are separate and sometimes competitive processes.

Focal retrograde amnesia and the episodic-semantic distinction.

PubMed

Wheeler, M A; McMillan, C T

2001-03-01

This article reports a review of focal retrograde amnesia (FRA), or the phenomenon of organically based severe memory loss restricted to retrograde, or pretraumatic, memory. Cases of FRA are classified according to the type of memory loss: episodic, semantic, or both. A few different clusters of the disorder were identified. Lesions to either the anterior temporal lobes or the posterior/visual cortex can result in an FRA that devastates retrograde episodic memory, while having smaller effects on semantic memory. A number of left-hemisphere patients have FRA confined to semantic memory. There are several additional examples of FRA following minor cerebral trauma that disrupts either episodic memory alone or both episodic and semantic memory that are not accompanied by evidence of structural brain lesions. We discuss these different profiles of FRA and their implications for the understanding of memory retrieval.

Attention, working memory, and grammaticality judgment in typical young adults.

PubMed

Smith, Pamela A

2011-06-01

To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.

Short-term memory deficits correlate with hippocampal-thalamic functional connectivity alterations following acute sleep restriction.

PubMed

Chengyang, Li; Daqing, Huang; Jianlin, Qi; Haisheng, Chang; Qingqing, Meng; Jin, Wang; Jiajia, Liu; Enmao, Ye; Yongcong, Shao; Xi, Zhang

2017-08-01

Acute sleep restriction heavily influences cognitive function, affecting executive processes such as attention, response inhibition, and memory. Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested a link between hippocampal activity and short-term memory function. However, the specific contribution of the hippocampus to the decline of short-term memory following sleep restriction has yet to be established. In the current study, we utilized resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the association between hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) and the decline of short-term memory following total sleep deprivation (TSD). Twenty healthy adult males aged 20.9 ± 2.3 years (age range, 18-24 years) were enrolled in a within-subject crossover study. Short-term memory and FC were assessed using a Delay-matching short-term memory test and a resting-state fMRI scan before and after TSD. Seed-based correlation analysis was performed using fMRI data for the left and right hippocampus to identify differences in hippocampal FC following TSD. Subjects demonstrated reduced alertness and a decline in short-term memory performance following TSD. Moreover, fMRI analysis identified reduced hippocampal FC with the superior frontal gyrus (SFG), temporal regions, and supplementary motor area. In addition, an increase in FC between the hippocampus and bilateral thalamus was observed, the extent of which correlated with short-term memory performance following TSD. Our findings indicate that the disruption of hippocampal-cortical connectivity is linked to the decline in short-term memory observed after acute sleep restriction. Such results provide further evidence that support the cognitive impairment model of sleep deprivation.

Randomized controlled trial evaluating the temporal effects of high-intensity exercise on learning, short-term and long-term memory, and prospective memory.

PubMed

Frith, Emily; Sng, Eveleen; Loprinzi, Paul D

2017-11-01

The broader purpose of this study was to examine the temporal effects of high-intensity exercise on learning, short-term and long-term retrospective memory and prospective memory. Among a sample of 88 young adult participants, 22 were randomized into one of four different groups: exercise before learning, control group, exercise during learning, and exercise after learning. The retrospective assessments (learning, short-term and long-term memory) were assessed using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Long-term memory including a 20-min and 24-hr follow-up assessment. Prospective memory was assessed using a time-based procedure by having participants contact (via phone) the researchers at a follow-up time period. The exercise stimulus included a 15-min bout of progressive maximal exertion treadmill exercise. High-intensity exercise prior to memory encoding (vs. exercise during memory encoding or consolidation) was effective in enhancing long-term memory (for both 20-min and 24-h follow-up assessments). We did not observe a differential temporal effect of high-intensity exercise on short-term memory (immediate post-memory encoding), learning or prospective memory. The timing of high-intensity exercise may play an important role in facilitating long-term memory. © 2017 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

"Truth be told" - Semantic memory as the scaffold for veridical communication.

PubMed

Hayes, Brett K; Ramanan, Siddharth; Irish, Muireann

2018-01-01

Theoretical accounts placing episodic memory as central to constructive and communicative functions neglect the role of semantic memory. We argue that the decontextualized nature of semantic schemas largely supersedes the computational bottleneck and error-prone nature of episodic memory. Rather, neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence of episodic-semantic interactions suggest that an integrative framework more accurately captures the mechanisms underpinning social communication.

Assessing the associative deficit of older adults in long-term and short-term/working memory.

PubMed

Chen, Tina; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe

2012-09-01

Older adults exhibit a deficit in associative long-term memory relative to younger adults. However, the literature is inconclusive regarding whether this deficit is attenuated in short-term/working memory. To elucidate the issue, three experiments assessed younger and older adults' item and interitem associative memory and the effects of several variables that might potentially contribute to the inconsistent pattern of results in previous studies. In Experiment 1, participants were tested on item and associative recognition memory with both long-term and short-term retention intervals in a single, continuous recognition paradigm. There was an associative deficit for older adults in the short-term and long-term intervals. Using only short-term intervals, Experiment 2 utilized mixed and blocked test designs to examine the effect of test event salience. Blocking the test did not attenuate the age-related associative deficit seen in the mixed test blocks. Finally, an age-related associative deficit was found in Experiment 3, under both sequential and simultaneous presentation conditions. Even while accounting for some methodological issues, the associative deficit of older adults is evident in short-term/working memory.

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…

The Pivotal Role of Semantic Memory in Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future

PubMed Central

Irish, Muireann; Piguet, Olivier

2013-01-01

Episodic memory refers to a complex and multifaceted process which enables the retrieval of richly detailed evocative memories from the past. In contrast, semantic memory is conceptualized as the retrieval of general conceptual knowledge divested of a specific spatiotemporal context. The neural substrates of the episodic and semantic memory systems have been dissociated in healthy individuals during functional imaging studies, and in clinical cohorts, leading to the prevailing view that episodic and semantic memory represent functionally distinct systems subtended by discrete neurobiological substrates. Importantly, however, converging evidence focusing on widespread neural networks now points to significant overlap between those regions essential for retrieval of autobiographical memories, episodic learning, and semantic processing. Here we review recent advances in episodic memory research focusing on neurodegenerative populations which has proved revelatory for our understanding of the complex interplay between episodic and semantic memory. Whereas episodic memory research has traditionally focused on retrieval of autobiographical events from the past, we also include evidence from the recent paradigm shift in which episodic memory is viewed as an adaptive and constructive process which facilitates the imagining of possible events in the future. We examine the available evidence which converges to highlight the pivotal role of semantic memory in providing schemas and meaning whether one is engaged in autobiographical retrieval for the past, or indeed, is endeavoring to construct a plausible scenario of an event in the future. It therefore seems plausible to contend that semantic processing may underlie most, if not all, forms of episodic memory, irrespective of temporal condition. PMID:23565081

Effects of saccadic bilateral eye movements on episodic and semantic autobiographical memory fluency.

PubMed

Parker, Andrew; Parkin, Adam; Dagnall, Neil

2013-01-01

Performing a sequence of fast saccadic horizontal eye movements has been shown to facilitate performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including the retrieval of episodic memories. One explanation for these effects is based on the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements increase hemispheric interaction, and that such interactions are important for particular types of memory. The aim of the current research was to assess the effect of horizontal saccadic eye movements on the retrieval of both episodic autobiographical memory (event/incident based memory) and semantic autobiographical memory (fact based memory) over recent and more distant time periods. It was found that saccadic eye movements facilitated the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories (over all time periods) but not semantic autobiographical memories. In addition, eye movements did not enhance the retrieval of non-autobiographical semantic memory. This finding illustrates a dissociation between the episodic and semantic characteristics of personal memory and is considered within the context of hemispheric contributions to episodic memory performance.

Effects of Saccadic Bilateral Eye Movements on Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory Fluency

PubMed Central

Parker, Andrew; Parkin, Adam; Dagnall, Neil

2013-01-01

Performing a sequence of fast saccadic horizontal eye movements has been shown to facilitate performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including the retrieval of episodic memories. One explanation for these effects is based on the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements increase hemispheric interaction, and that such interactions are important for particular types of memory. The aim of the current research was to assess the effect of horizontal saccadic eye movements on the retrieval of both episodic autobiographical memory (event/incident based memory) and semantic autobiographical memory (fact based memory) over recent and more distant time periods. It was found that saccadic eye movements facilitated the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories (over all time periods) but not semantic autobiographical memories. In addition, eye movements did not enhance the retrieval of non-autobiographical semantic memory. This finding illustrates a dissociation between the episodic and semantic characteristics of personal memory and is considered within the context of hemispheric contributions to episodic memory performance. PMID:24133435

Medical Concept Normalization in Social Media Posts with Recurrent Neural Networks.

PubMed

Tutubalina, Elena; Miftahutdinov, Zulfat; Nikolenko, Sergey; Malykh, Valentin

2018-06-12

Text mining of scientific libraries and social media has already proven itself as a reliable tool for drug repurposing and hypothesis generation. The task of mapping a disease mention to a concept in a controlled vocabulary, typically to the standard thesaurus in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), is known as medical concept normalization. This task is challenging due to the differences in the use of medical terminology between health care professionals and social media texts coming from the lay public. To bridge this gap, we use sequence learning with recurrent neural networks and semantic representation of one- or multi-word expressions: we develop end-to-end architectures directly tailored to the task, including bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory, Gated Recurrent Units with an attention mechanism, and additional semantic similarity features based on UMLS. Our evaluation against a standard benchmark shows that recurrent neural networks improve results over an effective baseline for classification based on convolutional neural networks. A qualitative examination of mentions discovered in a dataset of user reviews collected from popular online health information platforms as well as a quantitative evaluation both show improvements in the semantic representation of health-related expressions in social media. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Aggregated effects of combining daily milk consumption and aerobic exercise on short-term memory and sustained attention among female students.

PubMed

Leong, In-Tyng; Moghadam, Sedigheh; Hashim, Hairul A

2015-02-01

Regular aerobic exercise and milk consumption have been found to have positive effects on certain cognitive functions such as short-term memory and sustained attention. However, aggregated effects of combining these modalities have not been explored. This study examined the combined effects of milk supplementation and aerobic exercise on the short-term memory and sustained attention of female students aged 16 yr. (N = 81). The intervention involved serving of 250 ml of regular milk during school days and/or a 1-hr. aerobic exercise period twice per week for 6 weeks. The Digit Span Test and Digit Vigilance Test were used to measure short-term memory and sustained attention, respectively. The combination group (milk and exercise) and exercise group performed significantly better than did the milk and control groups in terms of short-term memory. No significant interaction or group differences were found for sustained attention. The results suggest benefits of regular exercise for students' short-term memory.

The Episodic Buffer in Children with Intellectual Disabilities: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Lucy A.

2010-01-01

Performance on three verbal measures (story recall, paired associated learning, category fluency) designed to assess the integration of long-term semantic and linguistic knowledge, phonological working memory and executive resources within the proposed "episodic buffer" of working memory (Baddeley, 2007) was assessed in children with intellectual…

Extent and neural basis of semantic memory impairment in mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Barbeau, Emmanuel J; Didic, Mira; Joubert, Sven; Guedj, Eric; Koric, Lejla; Felician, Olivier; Ranjeva, Jean-Philippe; Cozzone, Patrick; Ceccaldi, Mathieu

2012-01-01

An increasing number of studies indicate that semantic memory is impaired in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the extent and the neural basis of this impairment remain unknown. The aim of the present study was: 1) to evaluate whether all or only a subset of semantic domains are impaired in MCI patients; and 2) to assess the neural substrate of the semantic impairment in MCI patients using voxel-based analysis of MR grey matter density and SPECT perfusion. 29 predominantly amnestic MCI patients and 29 matched control subjects participated in this study. All subjects underwent a full neuropsychological assessment, along with a battery of five tests evaluating different domains of semantic memory. A semantic memory composite Z-score was established on the basis of this battery and was correlated with MRI grey matter density and SPECT perfusion measures. MCI patients were found to have significantly impaired performance across all semantic tasks, in addition to their anterograde memory deficit. Moreover, no temporal gradient was found for famous faces or famous public events and knowledge for the most remote decades was also impaired. Neuroimaging analyses revealed correlations between semantic knowledge and perirhinal/entorhinal areas as well as the anterior hippocampus. Therefore, the deficits in the realm of semantic memory in patients with MCI is more widespread than previously thought and related to dysfunction of brain areas beyond the limbic-diencephalic system involved in episodic memory. The severity of the semantic impairment may indicate a decline of semantic memory that began many years before the patients first consulted.

Episodic and Semantic Memory Contribute to Familiar and Novel Episodic Future Thinking.

PubMed

Wang, Tong; Yue, Tong; Huang, Xi Ting

2016-01-01

Increasing evidence indicates that episodic future thinking (EFT) relies on both episodic and semantic memory; however, event familiarity may importantly affect the extent to which episodic and semantic memory contribute to EFT. To test this possibility, two behavioral experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, we directly compared the proportion of episodic and semantic memory used in an EFT task. The results indicated that more episodic memory was used when imagining familiar future events compared with novel future events. Conversely, significantly more semantic memory was used when imagining novel events compared with familiar events. Experiment 2 aimed to verify the results of Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we found that familiarity moderated the effect of priming the episodic memory system on EFT; particularly, it increased the time required to construct a standard familiar episodic future event, but did not significantly affect novel episodic event reaction time. Collectively, these findings support the hypothesis that event familiarity importantly moderates episodic and semantic memory's contribution to EFT.

Event-Based Prospective Memory Is Independently Associated with Self-Report of Medication Management in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Woods, Steven Paul; Weinborn, Michael; Maxwell, Brenton R.; Gummery, Alice; Mo, Kevin; Ng, Amanda R. J.; Bucks, Romola S.

2014-01-01

Background Identifying potentially modifiable risk factors for medication non-adherence in older adults is important in order to enhance screening and intervention efforts designed to improve medication-taking behavior and health outcomes. The current study sought to determine the unique contribution of prospective memory (i.e., “remembering to remember”) to successful self-reported medication management in older adults. Methods Sixty-five older adults with current medication prescriptions completed a comprehensive research evaluation of sociodemographic, psychiatric, and neurocognitive functioning, which included the Memory for Adherence to Medication Scale (MAMS), Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), and a performance-based measure of prospective memory that measured both semantically-related and semantically-unrelated cue-intention (i.e., when-what) pairings. Results A series of hierarchical regressions controlling for biopsychosocial, other neurocognitive, and medication-related factors showed that elevated complaints on the PM scale of the PRMQ and worse performance on an objective semantically-unrelated event-based prospective memory task were independent predictors of poorer medication adherence as measured by the MAMS. Conclusions Prospective memory plays an important role in self-report of successful medication management among older adults. Findings may have implications for screening for older individuals “at risk” of non-adherence, as well as the development of prospective memory-based interventions to improve medication adherence and, ultimately, long-term health outcomes in older adults. PMID:24410357

Influence of Cognitive Ability on Therapy Outcomes for Anomia in Adults With Chronic Poststroke Aphasia.

PubMed

Dignam, Jade; Copland, David; O'Brien, Kate; Burfein, Penni; Khan, Asaduzzaman; Rodriguez, Amy D

2017-02-01

The relationship between cognitive abilities and aphasia rehabilitation outcomes is complex and remains poorly understood. This study investigated the influence of language and cognitive abilities on anomia therapy outcomes in adults with aphasia. Thirty-four adults with chronic aphasia participated in Aphasia Language Impairment and Functioning Therapy. A language and cognitive assessment battery, including 3 baseline naming probes, was administered prior to therapy. Naming accuracy for 30 treated and 30 untreated items was collected at posttherapy and 1-month follow-up. Multiple regression models were computed to evaluate the relationship between language and cognitive abilities at baseline and anomia therapy outcomes. Both language and cognitive variables significantly influenced anomia therapy gains. Verbal short-term memory ability significantly predicted naming gains for treated items at posttherapy (β = -.551, p = .002) and for untreated items at posttherapy (β = .456, p = .014) and 1-month follow-up (β = .455, p = .021). Furthermore, lexical-semantic processing significantly predicted naming gains for treated items at posttherapy (β = -.496, p = .004) and 1-month follow-up (β = .545, p = .012). Our findings suggest that individuals' cognitive ability, specifically verbal short-term memory, affects anomia treatment success. Further research into the relationship between cognitive ability and anomia therapy outcomes may help to optimize treatment techniques.

The effects of gender on the retrieval of episodic and semantic components of autobiographical memory.

PubMed

Fuentes, Amanda; Desrocher, Mary

2013-01-01

Despite consistent evidence that women exhibit greater episodic memory specificity than men, little attention has been paid to gender differences in the production of episodic details during autobiographical recall under conditions of high and low retrieval support. Similarly the role of gender on the production of semantic details used to support autobiographical memory recollections of specific events has been largely unexplored. In the present study an undergraduate sample of 50 men and 50 women were assessed using the Autobiographical Interview (Levine, Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, & Moscovitch, 2002). Women recalled more episodic information compared to men in the high retrieval support condition, whereas no gender differences were found in the low retrieval support condition. In addition, women produced more repetitions compared to men in the high retrieval support condition. No gender differences were found in the production of semantic details. These results are interpreted in terms of gender differences in encoding and reminiscence practices. This research adds to the literature on gender differences in memory recall and suggests that gender is an important variable in explaining individual differences in AM recall.

Autobiographical memory in semantic dementia: implication for theories of limbic-neocortical interaction in remote memory.

PubMed

McKinnon, Margaret C; Black, Sandra E; Miller, Bruce; Moscovitch, Morris; Levine, Brian

2006-01-01

We examined autobiographical memory performance in two patients with semantic dementia using a novel measure, the Autobiographical Interview [Levine, Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, & Moscovitch (2002). Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677-689], that is capable of dissociating episodic and personal semantic recall under varying levels of retrieval support. Earlier reports indicated that patients with semantic dementia demonstrate autobiographical episodic memory loss following a "reverse gradient" by which recent memories are preserved relative to remote memories. We found limited evidence for this pattern at conditions of low retrieval support. When structured probing was provided, patients' autobiographical memory performance was similar to that of controls. Retesting of one patient after 1 year indicated that retrieval support was insufficient to bolster performance following progressive prefrontal volume loss, as documented with quantified structural neuroimaging. These findings are discussed in relation to theories of limbic-neocortical interaction in autobiographical memory.

Brain oscillatory substrates of visual short-term memory capacity.

PubMed

Sauseng, Paul; Klimesch, Wolfgang; Heise, Kirstin F; Gruber, Walter R; Holz, Elisa; Karim, Ahmed A; Glennon, Mark; Gerloff, Christian; Birbaumer, Niels; Hummel, Friedhelm C

2009-11-17

The amount of information that can be stored in visual short-term memory is strictly limited to about four items. Therefore, memory capacity relies not only on the successful retention of relevant information but also on efficient suppression of distracting information, visual attention, and executive functions. However, completely separable neural signatures for these memory capacity-limiting factors remain to be identified. Because of its functional diversity, oscillatory brain activity may offer a utile solution. In the present study, we show that capacity-determining mechanisms, namely retention of relevant information and suppression of distracting information, are based on neural substrates independent of each other: the successful maintenance of relevant material in short-term memory is associated with cross-frequency phase synchronization between theta (rhythmical neural activity around 5 Hz) and gamma (> 50 Hz) oscillations at posterior parietal recording sites. On the other hand, electroencephalographic alpha activity (around 10 Hz) predicts memory capacity based on efficient suppression of irrelevant information in short-term memory. Moreover, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation at alpha frequency can modulate short-term memory capacity by influencing the ability to suppress distracting information. Taken together, the current study provides evidence for a double dissociation of brain oscillatory correlates of visual short-term memory capacity.

Strategic retrieval and the frontal lobes: evidence from confabulation and amnesia.

PubMed

Moscovitch, M; Melo, B

1997-07-01

Confabulation and amnesia are considered disorders of episodic but not of semantic memory. To test the limits of this view, retrieval from episodic and semantic memory was investigated in eight confabulating and nine non-confabulating amnesic subjects, and in 17 matched control subjects, by using a personal and an historical version of the Crovitz [Unconstrained search in long-term memory, Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St Louis, MO, 1973] cue-word test. In response to cue words such as letter or battle subjects had to describe in detail, respectively, a related event from their personal lives or from history before their birth. We found that a subset of amnesic subjects, those with presumed damage or dysfunction in the region of the ventromedial frontal cortex, would confabulate in response to these cues. Their confabulations involved semantic, historical memories, as much as episodic, personal ones: and that distortions of content were at least as common as those of time. Even when not confabulating, they had much more difficulty than other amnesic subjects in recovering memories related to these cues. In confabulating, as compared to non-confabulating, amnesic subjects, prompting led to an increase in confabulations but also to greater recovery of veridical memories. By comparison, non-confabulating amnesic subjects whose memory loss was as severe as that of the confabulators, had a milder deficit on the personal as well as the historical cue-word test. They benefited from prompting somewhat more than matched control subjects. These results suggest that confabulation is associated with impaired strategic retrieval processes resulting from damage in the region of the ventromedial frontal cortex. These strategic retrieval processes help initiate and guide search in episodic and in semantic memory and they help monitor and organize the output from those systems.

[Short-term memory characteristics of vibration intensity tactile perception on human wrist].

PubMed

Hao, Fei; Chen, Li-Juan; Lu, Wei; Song, Ai-Guo

2014-12-25

In this study, a recall experiment and a recognition experiment were designed to assess the human wrist's short-term memory characteristics of tactile perception on vibration intensity, by using a novel homemade vibrotactile display device based on the spatiotemporal combination vibration of multiple micro vibration motors as a test device. Based on the obtained experimental data, the short-term memory span, recognition accuracy and reaction time of vibration intensity were analyzed. From the experimental results, some important conclusions can be made: (1) The average short-term memory span of tactile perception on vibration intensity is 3 ± 1 items; (2) The greater difference between two adjacent discrete intensities of vibrotactile stimulation is defined, the better average short-term memory span human wrist gets; (3) There is an obvious difference of the average short-term memory span on vibration intensity between the male and female; (4) The mechanism of information extraction in short-term memory of vibrotactile display is to traverse the scanning process by comparison; (5) The recognition accuracy and reaction time performance of vibrotactile display compares unfavourably with that of visual and auditory. The results from this study are important for designing vibrotactile display coding scheme.

Short-term and working memory impairments in aphasia.

PubMed

Potagas, Constantin; Kasselimis, Dimitrios; Evdokimidis, Ioannis

2011-08-01

The aim of the present study is to investigate short-term memory and working memory deficits in aphasics in relation to the severity of their language impairment. Fifty-eight aphasic patients participated in this study. Based on language assessment, an aphasia score was calculated for each patient. Memory was assessed in two modalities, verbal and spatial. Mean scores for all memory tasks were lower than normal. Aphasia score was significantly correlated with performance on all memory tasks. Correlation coefficients for short-term memory and working memory were approximately of the same magnitude. According to our findings, severity of aphasia is related with both verbal and spatial memory deficits. Moreover, while aphasia score correlated with lower scores in both short-term memory and working memory tasks, the lack of substantial difference between corresponding correlation coefficients suggests a possible primary deficit in information retention rather than impairment in working memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Retrieval-Induced Inhibition in Short-Term Memory.

PubMed

Kang, Min-Suk; Choi, Joongrul

2015-07-01

We used a visual illusion called motion repulsion as a model system for investigating competition between two mental representations. Subjects were asked to remember two random-dot-motion displays presented in sequence and then to report the motion directions for each. Remembered motion directions were shifted away from the actual motion directions, an effect similar to the motion repulsion observed during perception. More important, the item retrieved second showed greater repulsion than the item retrieved first. This suggests that earlier retrieval exerted greater inhibition on the other item being held in short-term memory. This retrieval-induced motion repulsion could be explained neither by reduced cognitive resources for maintaining short-term memory nor by continued inhibition between short-term memory representations. These results indicate that retrieval of memory representations inhibits other representations in short-term memory. We discuss mechanisms of retrieval-induced inhibition and their implications for the structure of memory. © The Author(s) 2015.

[Investigating phonological planning processes in speech production through a speech-error induction technique].

PubMed

Nakayama, Masataka; Saito, Satoru

2015-08-01

The present study investigated principles of phonological planning, a common serial ordering mechanism for speech production and phonological short-term memory. Nakayama and Saito (2014) have investigated the principles by using a speech-error induction technique, in which participants were exposed to an auditory distracIor word immediately before an utterance of a target word. They demonstrated within-word adjacent mora exchanges and serial position effects on error rates. These findings support, respectively, the temporal distance and the edge principles at a within-word level. As this previous study induced errors using word distractors created by exchanging adjacent morae in the target words, it is possible that the speech errors are expressions of lexical intrusions reflecting interactive activation of phonological and lexical/semantic representations. To eliminate this possibility, the present study used nonword distractors that had no lexical or semantic representations. This approach successfully replicated the error patterns identified in the abovementioned study, further confirming that the temporal distance and edge principles are organizing precepts in phonological planning.

Rapid effects of estrogens on short-term memory: Possible mechanisms.

PubMed

Paletta, Pietro; Sheppard, Paul A S; Matta, Richard; Ervin, Kelsy S J; Choleris, Elena

2018-06-01

Estrogens affect learning and memory through rapid and delayed mechanisms. Here we review studies on rapid effects on short-term memory. Estradiol rapidly improves social and object recognition memory, spatial memory, and social learning when administered systemically. The dorsal hippocampus mediates estrogen rapid facilitation of object, social and spatial short-term memory. The medial amygdala mediates rapid facilitation of social recognition. The three estrogen receptors, α (ERα), β (ERβ) and the G-protein coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) appear to play different roles depending on the task and brain region. Both ERα and GPER agonists rapidly facilitate short-term social and object recognition and spatial memory when administered systemically or into the dorsal hippocampus and facilitate social recognition in the medial amygdala. Conversely, only GPER can facilitate social learning after systemic treatment and an ERβ agonist only rapidly improved short-term spatial memory when given systemically or into the hippocampus, but also facilitates social recognition in the medial amygdala. Investigations into the mechanisms behind estrogens' rapid effects on short term memory showed an involvement of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) kinase pathways. Recent evidence also showed that estrogens interact with the neuropeptide oxytocin in rapidly facilitating social recognition. Estrogens can increase the production and/or release of oxytocin and other neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and acetylcholine. Therefore, it is possible that estrogens' rapid effects on short-term memory may occur through the regulation of various neurotransmitters, although more research is need on these interactions as well as the mechanisms of estrogens' actions on short-term memory. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The interaction of short-term and long-term memory in phonetic category formation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harnsberger, James D.

2002-05-01

This study examined the role that short-term memory capacity plays in the relationship between novel stimuli (e.g., non-native speech sounds, native nonsense words) and phonetic categories in long-term memory. Thirty native speakers of American English were administered five tests: categorial AXB discrimination using nasal consonants from Malayalam; categorial identification, also using Malayalam nasals, which measured the influence of phonetic categories in long-term memory; digit span; nonword span, a short-term memory measure mediated by phonetic categories in long-term memory; and paired-associate word learning (word-word and word-nonword pairs). The results showed that almost all measures were significantly correlated with one another. The strongest predictor for the discrimination and word-nonword learning results was nonword (r=+0.62) and digit span (r=+0.51), respectively. When the identification test results were partialed out, only nonword span significantly correlated with discrimination. The results show a strong influence of short-term memory capacity on the encoding of phonetic detail within phonetic categories and suggest that long-term memory representations regulate the capacity of short-term memory to preserve information for subsequent encoding. The results of this study will also be discussed with regards to resolving the tension between episodic and abstract models of phonetic category structure.

Attention Problems, Phonological Short-Term Memory, and Visuospatial Short-Term Memory: Differential Effects on Near- and Long-Term Scholastic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sarver, Dustin E.; Rapport, Mark D.; Kofler, Michael J.; Scanlan, Sean W.; Raiker, Joseph S.; Altro, Thomas A.; Bolden, Jennifer

2012-01-01

The current study examined individual differences in children's phonological and visuospatial short-term memory as potential mediators of the relationship among attention problems and near- and long-term scholastic achievement. Nested structural equation models revealed that teacher-reported attention problems were associated negatively with…

Shared Semantics and the Use of Organizational Memories for E-Mail Communications.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwartz, David G.

1998-01-01

Examines the use of shared semantics information to link concepts in an organizational memory to e-mail communications. Presents a framework for determining shared semantics based on organizational and personal user profiles. Illustrates how shared semantics are used by the HyperMail system to help link organizational memories (OM) content to…

Developmental amnesia: Fractionation of developing memory systems.

PubMed

Temple, Christine M; Richardson, Paul

2006-07-01

Study of the developmental amnesias utilizing a cognitive neuropsychological methodology has highlighted the dissociations that may occur between the development of components of memory. M.M., a new case of developmental amnesia, was identified after screening from the normal population on cognitive and memory measures. Retrospective investigation found that he was of low birthweight. M.M. had impaired semantic memory for knowledge of facts and words. There was impaired episodic memory for words and stories but intact episodic memory for visual designs and features. This forms a double dissociation with Dr S. (Temple, 1992), who had intact verbal but impaired visual episodic memory. M.M. also had impaired autobiographical episodic memory. Nevertheless, learning over repeated trials occurred, consistent with previous theorizing that learning is not simply the effect of recurrent episodic memory. Nor is it the same as establishing semantic memory, since for M.M. semantic memory is also impaired. Within reading, there was an impaired lexico-semantic system, elevated levels of homophone confusion, but intact phonological reading, consistent with surface dyslexia and raising issues about the interrelationship of the semantic system and literacy development. The results are compatible with discrete semi-independent components within memory development, whereby deficits are associated with residual normality, but there may also be an explicit relationship between the semantic memory system and both vocabulary and reading acquisition.

Measurements of auditory-verbal STM span in aphasia: effects of item, task, and lexical impairment.

PubMed

Martin, Nadine; Ayala, Jennifer

2004-06-01

In the first part of this study, we investigated effects of item and task type on span performance in a group of aphasic individuals with word processing and STM deficits. Group analyses revealed significant effects of item on span performance with span being greater for digits than for words. We also investigated associations between subjects' lexical-semantic and phonological processing abilities and performance on four measures of verbal span (digit and word span, each varied for type of response, verbal vs. pointing) as well as one measure of nonverbal span. We predicted and found that the patterns of association between verbal span tasks and lexical abilities reflected the integrity of language processes and representations deployed in each paradigm used to assess span. Performance on the pointing span task, which engages both lexical-semantic and phonological processes, correlated with measures of both lexical-semantic and phonological abilities. Performance on repetition span, which engages primarily input and output phonological processes, correlated with measures of phonological abilities but not measures of lexical-semantic abilities. However, when partial correlations were performed for two subject groups based on their relative preservation of lexical-semantic ability (less or more than phonological ability), repetition span correlated with lexical-semantic measures only in the subgroup with relatively impaired lexical-semantics. Additionally, performance on the nonverbal span task correlated with measures of phonological abilities, suggesting either a general cognitive deficit affecting verbal and nonverbal STM or possibly, the use of a verbal strategy to perform this task. Our discussion focuses on the interpretation of span measurements in clinical practice and research, as well as the implications of these data for theories of short-term memory and word processing.

Impaired short-term memory for pitch in congenital amusia.

PubMed

Tillmann, Barbara; Lévêque, Yohana; Fornoni, Lesly; Albouy, Philippe; Caclin, Anne

2016-06-01

Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of music perception and production. The hypothesis is that the musical deficits arise from altered pitch processing, with impairments in pitch discrimination (i.e., pitch change detection, pitch direction discrimination and identification) and short-term memory. The present review article focuses on the deficit of short-term memory for pitch. Overall, the data discussed here suggest impairments at each level of processing in short-term memory tasks; starting with the encoding of the pitch information and the creation of the adequate memory trace, the retention of the pitch traces over time as well as the recollection and comparison of the stored information with newly incoming information. These impairments have been related to altered brain responses in a distributed fronto-temporal network, associated with decreased connectivity between these structures, as well as in abnormalities in the connectivity between the two auditory cortices. In contrast, amusic participants׳ short-term memory abilities for verbal material are preserved. These findings show that short-term memory deficits in congenital amusia are specific to pitch, suggesting a pitch-memory system that is, at least partly, separated from verbal memory. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Auditory working memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Autobiographical Memory in Semantic Dementia: A Longitudinal fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maguire, Eleanor A.; Kumaran, Dharshan; Hassabis, Demis; Kopelman, Michael D.

2010-01-01

Whilst patients with semantic dementia (SD) are known to suffer from semantic memory and language impairments, there is less agreement about whether memory for personal everyday experiences, autobiographical memory, is compromised. In healthy individuals, functional MRI (fMRI) has helped to delineate a consistent and distributed brain network…

Remote semantic memory for public figures in HIV infection, alcoholism, and their comorbidity.

PubMed

Fama, Rosemary; Rosenbloom, Margaret J; Sassoon, Stephanie A; Thompson, Megan A; Pfefferbaum, Adolf; Sullivan, Edith V

2011-02-01

Impairments in component processes of working and episodic memory mark both HIV infection and chronic alcoholism, with compounded deficits often observed in individuals comorbid for these conditions. Remote semantic memory processes, however, have only seldom been studied in these diagnostic groups. Examination of remote semantic memory could provide insight into the underlying processes associated with storage and retrieval of learned information over extended time periods while elucidating spared and impaired cognitive functions in these clinical groups. We examined component processes of remote semantic memory in HIV infection and chronic alcoholism in 4 subject groups (HIV, ALC, HIV + ALC, and age-matched healthy adults) using a modified version of the Presidents Test. Free recall, recognition, and sequencing of presidential candidates and election dates were assessed. In addition, component processes of working, episodic, and semantic memory were assessed with ancillary cognitive tests. The comorbid group (HIV + ALC) was significantly impaired on sequencing of remote semantic information compared with age-matched healthy adults. Free recall of remote semantic information was also modestly impaired in the HIV + ALC group, but normal performance for recognition of this information was observed. Few differences were observed between the single diagnosis groups (HIV, ALC) and healthy adults, although examination of the component processes underlying remote semantic memory scores elicited differences between the HIV and ALC groups. Selective remote memory processes were related to lifetime alcohol consumption in the ALC group and to viral load and depression level in the HIV group. Hepatitis C diagnosis was associated with lower remote semantic memory scores in all 3 clinical groups. Education level did not account for group differences reported. This study provides behavioral support for the existence of adverse effects associated with the comorbidity of HIV infection and chronic alcoholism on selective component processes of memory function, with untoward effects exacerbated by Hepatitis C infection. The pattern of remote semantic memory function in HIV + ALC is consistent with those observed in neurological conditions primarily affecting frontostriatal pathways and suggests that remote memory dysfunction in HIV + ALC may be a result of impaired retrieval processes rather than loss of remote semantic information per se. Copyright © 2010 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.

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

Prosodic Encoding in Silent Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilkenfeld, Deborah

In silent reading, short-memory tasks, such as semantic and syntactic processing, require a stage of phonetic encoding between visual representation and the actual extraction of meaning, and this encoding includes prosodic as well as segmental features. To test for this suprasegmental coding, an experiment was conducted in which subjects were…

Complex network structure influences processing in long-term and short-term memory.

PubMed

Vitevitch, Michael S; Chan, Kit Ying; Roodenrys, Steven

2012-07-01

Complex networks describe how entities in systems interact; the structure of such networks is argued to influence processing. One measure of network structure, clustering coefficient, C, measures the extent to which neighbors of a node are also neighbors of each other. Previous psycholinguistic experiments found that the C of phonological word-forms influenced retrieval from the mental lexicon (that portion of long-term memory dedicated to language) during the on-line recognition and production of spoken words. In the present study we examined how network structure influences other retrieval processes in long- and short-term memory. In a false-memory task-examining long-term memory-participants falsely recognized more words with low- than high-C. In a recognition memory task-examining veridical memories in long-term memory-participants correctly recognized more words with low- than high-C. However, participants in a serial recall task-examining redintegration in short-term memory-recalled lists comprised of high-C words more accurately than lists comprised of low-C words. These results demonstrate that network structure influences cognitive processes associated with several forms of memory including lexical, long-term, and short-term.

Science and Technology Text Mining: Text Mining of the Journal Cortex

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-01-01

Amnesia Retrograde Amnesia GENERAL Semantic Memory Episodic Memory Working Memory TEST Serial Position Curve...in Cortex can be reasonably divided into four categories (papers in each category in parenthesis): Semantic Memory (151); Handedness (145); Amnesia ... Semantic Memory (151) is divided into Verbal/ Numerical (76) and Visual/ Spatial (75). Amnesia (119) is divided into Amnesia Symptoms (50) and

Longitudinal Study of a Novel Performance-based Measure of Daily Function

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-04-01

measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had compromises in...UPSA, as well as measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had... memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had compromises in everyday functional competence and that the

Neural Evidence for a Distinction Between Short-Term Memory and the Focus of Attention

PubMed Central

Lewis-Peacock, Jarrod A.; Drysdale, Andrew T.; Oberauer, Klaus; Postle, Bradley R.

2011-01-01

It is widely assumed that the short-term retention of information is accomplished via maintenance of an active neural trace. However, we demonstrate that memory can be preserved across a brief delay despite the apparent loss of sustained representations. Delay-period activity may in fact reflect the focus of attention, rather than short-term memory. We unconfounded attention and memory by causing external and internal shifts of attention away from items that were being actively retained. Multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI indicated that only items within the focus of attention elicited an active neural trace. Activity corresponding to representations of items outside the focus quickly dropped to baseline. Nevertheless, this information was remembered after a brief delay. Our data also show that refocusing attention towards a previously unattended memory item can reactivate its neural signature. The loss of sustained activity has long been thought to indicate a disruption of short-term memory, but our results suggest that, even for small memory loads not exceeding the capacity limits of short-term memory, the active maintenance of a stimulus representation may not be necessary for its short-term retention. PMID:21955164

Circadian modulation of short-term memory in Drosophila.

PubMed

Lyons, Lisa C; Roman, Gregg

2009-01-01

Endogenous biological clocks are widespread regulators of behavior and physiology, allowing for a more efficient allocation of efforts and resources over the course of a day. The extent that different processes are regulated by circadian oscillators, however, is not fully understood. We investigated the role of the circadian clock on short-term associative memory formation using a negatively reinforced olfactory-learning paradigm in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that memory formation was regulated in a circadian manner. The peak performance in short-term memory (STM) occurred during the early subjective night with a twofold performance amplitude after a single pairing of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. This rhythm in memory is eliminated in both timeless and period mutants and is absent during constant light conditions. Circadian gating of sensory perception does not appear to underlie the rhythm in short-term memory as evidenced by the nonrhythmic shock avoidance and olfactory avoidance behaviors. Moreover, central brain oscillators appear to be responsible for the modulation as cryptochrome mutants, in which the antennal circadian oscillators are nonfunctional, demonstrate robust circadian rhythms in short-term memory. Together these data suggest that central, rather than peripheral, circadian oscillators modulate the formation of short-term associative memory and not the perception of the stimuli.

Short-Term Memory; An Annotated Bibliography. Supplement 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Dennis F.

A compilation of 165 references dealing with short term memory, this bibliography supplements "Short-Term Memory: An Annotated Bibliography" (August 1968). The time period covered is predominantly June 1968 to June 1969. Such aspects and topics as psychometrics, motivation, human engineering, vision, auditory perception, verbal and nonverbal…

Short-term Memory as a Processing Shift

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis-Smith, Marion Quinn

1975-01-01

The series of experiments described here examined the predictions for free recall from sequential models and the shift formulation, focusing on the roles of short- and long-term memory in the primacy/recency shift and on the effects of expectancies on short- and long-term memory. (Author/RK)

No effect of transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on short-term memory.

PubMed

Wang, Jing; Wen, Jian-Bing; Li, Xiao-Li

2018-01-01

Short-term memory refers to the capacity for holding information in mind for a short period of time with conscious memorization. It is an important ability for daily life and is impaired in several neurological and psychiatric disorders. Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was reported to enhance the capability of short-term memory in healthy subjects. However, results were not consistent and what is the possible impact factor is not known. One important factor that may significantly influence the effect of tDCS is the timing of tDCS administration. In order to explore whether tDCS impact short-term memory and the optimal timing of tDCS administration, we applied anodal tDCS to the left DLPFC to explore the modulatory effect of online and off-line tDCS on digit span as well as visual short-term memory performance in healthy subjects. Results showed tDCS of the left DLPFC did not influence intentional digit span memory performance, whether before the task or during the task. In addition, tDCS of the DLPFC administered before the task showed no effect on visual short-term memory, while there was a trend of increase in false alarm when tDCS of the DLPFC administered during the task. These results did not provide evidence for the enhancement of short-term memory by tDCS of the left DLPFC in healthy subjects, but it suggested an importance of administration time for visual short-term memory. Further studies are required to taking into account the baseline performance of subjects and time-dependence feature of tDCS. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The differential effects of ecstasy/polydrug use on executive components: shifting, inhibition, updating and access to semantic memory.

PubMed

Montgomery, Catharine; Fisk, John E; Newcombe, Russell; Murphy, Phillip N

2005-10-01

Recent theoretical models suggest that the central executive may not be a unified structure. The present study explored the nature of central executive deficits in ecstasy users. In study 1, 27 ecstasy users and 34 non-users were assessed using tasks to tap memory updating (computation span; letter updating) and access to long-term memory (a semantic fluency test and the Chicago Word Fluency Test). In study 2, 51 ecstasy users and 42 non-users completed tasks that assess mental set switching (number/letter and plus/minus) and inhibition (random letter generation). MANOVA revealed that ecstasy users performed worse on both tasks used to assess memory updating and on tasks to assess access to long-term memory (C- and S-letter fluency). However, notwithstanding the significant ecstasy group-related effects, indices of cocaine and cannabis use were also significantly correlated with most of the executive measures. Unexpectedly, in study 2, ecstasy users performed significantly better on the inhibition task, producing more letters than non-users. No group differences were observed on the switching tasks. Correlations between indices of ecstasy use and number of letters produced were significant. The present study provides further support for ecstasy/polydrug-related deficits in memory updating and in access to long-term memory. The surplus evident on the inhibition task should be treated with some caution, as this was limited to a single measure and has not been supported by our previous work.

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.

Episodic and Semantic Memories of a Residential Environmental Education Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knapp, Doug; Benton, Gregory M.

2006-01-01

This study used a phenomenological approach to investigate the recollections of participants of an environmental education (EE) residential program. Ten students who participated in a residential EE program in the fall of 2001 were interviewed in the fall of 2002. Three major themes relating to the participants' long-term memory of the residential…

Beyond the Memory Mechanism: Person-Selective and Nonselective Processes in Recognition of Personally Familiar Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sugiura, Motoaki; Mano, Yoko; Sasaki, Akihiro; Sadato, Norihiro

2011-01-01

Special processes recruited during the recognition of personally familiar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodic and semantic information that selectively represents each person. However, the processes may also include person nonselective ones, which may require interpretation in terms beyond the memory mechanism. To examine this…

Using semantic memory to boost 'episodic' recall in a case of developmental amnesia.

PubMed

Brandt, Karen R; Gardiner, John M; Vargha-Khadem, Faraneh; Baddeley, Alan D; Mishkin, Mortimer

2006-07-17

We report two experiments that investigated factors that might boost 'episodic' recall for Jon, a developmental amnesic whose episodic memory is gravely impaired but whose semantic memory seems relatively normal. Experiment 1 showed that Jon's recall improved following a semantic study task compared with a non-semantic study task, as well as following four repeated study trials compared with only one. Experiment 2 additionally revealed that Jon's recall improved after acting compared with reading action phrases at study, but only if the phrases were well integrated semantically. The results provide some support for the hypothesis that Jon's 'episodic' recall depends on the extent to which he is able to retrieve events using semantic memory.

A Revised Model of Short-Term Memory and Long-Term Learning of Verbal Sequences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burgess, Neil; Hitch, Graham J.

2006-01-01

The interaction between short- and long-term memory is studied within a model in which phonemic and (temporal) contextual information have separate influences on immediate verbal serial recall via connections with short- and long-term plasticity [Burgess, N., & Hitch, G.J. (1999). Memory for serial order: a network model of the phonological loop…

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.

Word repetition in amnesia. Electrophysiological measures of impaired and spared memory.

PubMed

Olichney, J M; Van Petten, C; Paller, K A; Salmon, D P; Iragui, V J; Kutas, M

2000-09-01

Amnesic patients often show improved performance when stimuli are repeated, even in the absence of conscious memory for those stimuli. Although these performance changes are typically attributed to perceptual or motor systems, in some cases they may be related to basic language processing. We examined two neurophysiological measures that vary with word repetition in 12 amnesic patients and 12 control subjects: (i) a late positive component of the event-related potential (ERP) linked to conscious memory and (ii) the N400 component that varies with language comprehension. In each trial, the subject heard a category name, then viewed a word, and then decided whether the word was semantically congruous or incongruous (e.g. 'yes' for 'baby animal: cub'; 'no' for 'water sport: kitchen'). Recall and recognition testing at the end of the experiment showed that control subjects had better memory for congruous than for incongruous words, as did the amnesic patients, who performed less well overall. In contrast, amnesic patients were unimpaired on the category decisions required in each trial and, like the control subjects, showed a large N400 for incongruous relative to congruous words. Similarly, when incongruous trials were repeated after 0-13 intervening trials, N400s were reduced in both groups. When congruous trials were repeated, a late positive repetition effect was observed, but only in the control group. Furthermore, the amplitude of the late positive repetition effect was highly correlated with later word recall in both patients and controls. In the patients, the correlation was also observed with memory scores from standardized neuropsychological tests. These data are consistent with a proposed link between the late positive repetition effect and conscious memory. On the other hand, the N400 repetition effect was not correlated with episodic memory abilities, but instead indexed an aspect of memory that was intact in the amnesic patients. The preserved N400 repetition effect is an example of preserved memory in amnesia that does not easily fit into the categories of low-level perceptual processing or of motor learning. Instead, the sensitivity of the N400 to both semantic context and repetition may reflect a short-term memory process that serves language comprehension in realtime.

Assessment of short-term memory in Arabic speaking children with specific language impairment.

PubMed

Kaddah, F A; Shoeib, R M; Mahmoud, H E

2010-12-15

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) may have some kind of memory disorder that could increase their linguistic impairment. This study assessed the short-term memory skills in Arabic speaking children with either Expressive Language Impairment (ELI) or Receptive/Expressive Language Impairment (R/ELI) in comparison to controls in order to estimate the nature and extent of any specific deficits in these children that could explain the different prognostic results of language intervention. Eighteen children were included in each group. Receptive, expressive and total language quotients were calculated using the Arabic language test. Assessment of auditory and visual short-term memory was done using the Arabic version of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Both groups of SLI performed significantly lower linguistic abilities and poorer auditory and visual short-term memory in comparison to normal children. The R/ELI group presented an inferior performance than the ELI group in all measured parameters. Strong association was found between most tasks of auditory and visual short-term memory and linguistic abilities. The results of this study highlighted a specific degree of deficit of auditory and visual short-term memories in both groups of SLI. These deficits were more prominent in R/ELI group. Moreover, the strong association between the different auditory and visual short-term memories and language abilities in children with SLI must be taken into account when planning an intervention program for these children.

Autobiographically significant concepts: more episodic than semantic in nature? An electrophysiological investigation of overlapping types of memory.

PubMed

Renoult, Louis; Davidson, Patrick S R; Schmitz, Erika; Park, Lillian; Campbell, Kenneth; Moscovitch, Morris; Levine, Brian

2015-01-01

A common assertion is that semantic memory emerges from episodic memory, shedding the distinctive contexts associated with episodes over time and/or repeated instances. Some semantic concepts, however, may retain their episodic origins or acquire episodic information during life experiences. The current study examined this hypothesis by investigating the ERP correlates of autobiographically significant (AS) concepts, that is, semantic concepts that are associated with vivid episodic memories. We inferred the contribution of semantic and episodic memory to AS concepts using the amplitudes of the N400 and late positive component, respectively. We compared famous names that easily brought to mind episodic memories (high AS names) against equally famous names that did not bring such recollections to mind (low AS names) on a semantic task (fame judgment) and an episodic task (recognition memory). Compared with low AS names, high AS names were associated with increased amplitude of the late positive component in both tasks. Moreover, in the recognition task, this effect of AS was highly correlated with recognition confidence. In contrast, the N400 component did not differentiate the high versus low AS names but, instead, was related to the amount of general knowledge participants had regarding each name. These results suggest that semantic concepts high in AS, such as famous names, have an episodic component and are associated with similar brain processes to those that are engaged by episodic memory. Studying AS concepts may provide unique insights into how episodic and semantic memory interact.

Gummed-up memory: chewing gum impairs short-term recall.

PubMed

Kozlov, Michail D; Hughes, Robert W; Jones, Dylan M

2012-01-01

Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity. Experiment 3 demonstrated that manual tapping produces a similar pattern of impairment to that of chewing gum. These results clearly qualify the assertion that chewing gum improves short-term memory. They also pose a problem for short-term memory theories asserting that forgetting is based on domain-specific interference given that chewing does not interfere with verbal memory any more than tapping. It is suggested that tapping and chewing reduce the general capacity to process sequences.

Calcium homeostasis and protein kinase/phosphatase balance participate in nicotine-induced memory improvement in passive avoidance task in mice.

PubMed

Michalak, Agnieszka; Biala, Grazyna

2017-01-15

Long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) depend on specific postsynaptic Ca 2+ /calmodulin concentration. LTP results from Ca 2+ influx through the activated NMDA receptors or voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) and is linked with activation of protein kinases including mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). Weaker synaptic stimulation, as a result of low Ca 2+ influx, leads to activation of Ca 2+ /calmodulin-dependent phosphatase (calcineurin - CaN) and triggers LTD. Interestingly, both memory formation and drug addiction share similar neuroplastic changes. Nicotine, which is one of the most common addictive drugs, manifests its memory effects through nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). Because nAChRs may also gate Ca 2+ , it is suggested that calcium signaling pathways are involved in nicotine-induced memory effects. Within the scope of the study was to evaluate the importance of calcium homeostasis and protein kinase/phosphatase balance in nicotine-induced short- and long-term memory effects. To assess memory function in mice passive avoidance test was used. The presented results confirm that acute nicotine (0.1mg/kg) improves short- and long-term memory. Pretreatment with L-type VGCC blockers (amlodipine, nicardipine verapamil) increased nicotine-induced memory improvement in the context of short- and long-term memory. Pretreatment with FK-506 (a potent CaN inhibitor) enhanced short- but not long-term memory effects of nicotine, while SL-327 (a selective MAPK/ERK kinase inhibitor) attenuated both nicotine-induced short- and long-term memory improvement. Acute nicotine enhances both types of memory via L-type VGCC blockade and via ERK1/2 activation. Only short- but not long-term memory enhancement induced by nicotine is dependent on CaN inhibition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Episodic Memory, Semantic Memory, and Fluency.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schaefer, Carl F.

1980-01-01

Suggests that creating a second-language semantic network can be conceived as developing a plan for retrieving second-language word forms. Characteristics of linguistic performance which will promote fluency are discussed in light of the distinction between episodic and semantic memory. (AMH)

Sentence Verification, Sentence Recognition, and the Semantic-Episodic Distinction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shoben, Edward J.; And Others

1978-01-01

In an attempt to assess the validity of the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, this research examined the influence of two variables on sentence verification (presumably a semantic memory task) and sentence recognition (presumably an episodic memory task). ( Editor)

The Semantic Web and Educational Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maddux, Cleborne D., Ed.

2008-01-01

The "Semantic Web" is an idea proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the "World Wide Web." The topic has been generating a great deal of interest and enthusiasm, and there is a rapidly growing body of literature dealing with it. This article attempts to explain how the Semantic Web would work, and explores short-term and long-term…

The effect of zinc supplementation of lactating rats on short-term and long-term memory of their male offspring.

PubMed

Karami, Mohammad; Ehsanivostacolaee, Simin; Moazedi, Ali Ahmad; Nosrati, Anahita

2013-01-01

In this study the effect of zinc chloride (ZnCl2) administration on the short-term and long-term memory of rats were assessed. We enrolled six groups of adult female and control group of eight Wistar rats in each group. One group was control group with free access to food and water, and five groups drunk zinc chloride in different doses (20, 30, 50, 70 and 100 mg/kg/day) in drinking water for two weeks during lactation .One month after birth, a shuttle box used to short- term and long-term memory and the latency in entering the dark chamber as well. This experiment showed that maternal 70 mg/kg dietary zinc during lactation influenced the working memory of rats' offspring in all groups. Rats received 100 mg/kg/day zinc during lactation so they had significant impairment in working memory (short-term) of their offspring (P<0.05). There was no significant difference in reference (long-term) memory of all groups. Drug consumption below70 mg/kg/day zinc chloride during lactation had no effect. While enhanced 100 mg/ kg/ day zinc in lactating rats could cause short-term memory impairment.

Eye Movements and Visual Memory for Scenes

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-01-01

Scene memory research has demonstrated that the memory representation of a semantically inconsistent object in a scene is more detailed and/or complete... memory during scene viewing, then changes to semantically inconsistent objects (which should be represented more com- pletely) should be detected more... semantic description. Due to the surprise nature of the visual memory test, any learning that occurred during the search portion of the experiment was

Working memory training and semantic structuring improves remembering future events, not past events.

PubMed

Richter, Kim Merle; Mödden, Claudia; Eling, Paul; Hildebrandt, Helmut

2015-01-01

Objectives. Memory training in combination with practice in semantic structuring and word fluency has been shown to improve memory performance. This study investigated the efficacy of a working memory training combined with exercises in semantic structuring and word fluency and examined whether training effects generalize to other cognitive tasks. Methods. In this double-blind randomized control study, 36 patients with memory impairments following brain damage were allocated to either the experimental or the active control condition, with both groups receiving 9 hours of therapy. The experimental group received a computer-based working memory training and exercises in word fluency and semantic structuring. The control group received the standard memory therapy provided in the rehabilitation center. Patients were tested on a neuropsychological test battery before and after therapy, resulting in composite scores for working memory; immediate, delayed, and prospective memory; word fluency; and attention. Results. The experimental group improved significantly in working memory and word fluency. The training effects also generalized to prospective memory tasks. No specific effect on episodic memory could be demonstrated. Conclusion. Combined treatment of working memory training with exercises in semantic structuring is an effective method for cognitive rehabilitation of organic memory impairment. © The Author(s) 2014.

Permanent global amnesia: case report.

PubMed

Bertolucci, Paulo H F; Siviero, Marilena O; Bueno, Orlando F A; Okamoto, Ivan H; Camargo, Candida H P; Santos, Ruth F

2004-04-01

To present a case of permanent global amnesia related to hippocampal damage. Permanent global amnesia is a very rare condition of unknown etiology; lesions restricted to the hippocampus are uncommon, which hinders investigations of this pattern of memory loss. This case is unusually well documented, as the patient underwent extensive neuropsychological evaluations. A cheerful right-handed, 83-year-old retired electrician was first evaluated in 1990 for progressive difficulty in learning new information and in recalling events over the preceding 3-4 years. Tests over the next 5 years showed that the impairment was confined to episodic declarative memory. New verbal information could be stored only in episodic memory in a restricted manner, limited by short-term memory capacity. A relatively mild retrograde amnesia was detected. Semantic and implicit memory was spared, as were other functions evaluated. The patient's language and executive function were strikingly efficient. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain showed bilateral atrophy of the hippocampi and amygdalae, ruling out conditions such as tumour growth. A diagnosis of permanent global amnesia was made. In the ensuing years, the retrograde amnesia worsened, but no new deficits were identified. This case, the first with a detailed cognitive examination, is evidence of a relatively pure hippocampal pattern for memory loss in permanent global amnesia.

The roles of long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge in phonological short-term memory.

PubMed

Tanida, Yuki; Ueno, Taiji; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Saito, Satoru

2015-04-01

Many previous studies have explored and confirmed the influence of long-term phonological representations on phonological short-term memory. In most investigations, phonological effects have been explored with respect to phonotactic constraints or frequency. If interaction between long-term memory and phonological short-term memory is a generalized principle, then other phonological characteristics-that is, suprasegmental aspects of phonology-should also exert similar effects on phonological short-term memory. We explored this hypothesis through three immediate serial-recall experiments that manipulated Japanese nonwords with respect to lexical prosody (pitch-accent type, reflecting suprasegmental characteristics) as well as phonotactic frequency (reflecting segmental characteristics). The results showed that phonotactic frequency affected the retention not only of the phonemic sequences, but also of pitch-accent patterns, when participants were instructed to recall both the phoneme sequence and accent pattern of nonwords. In addition, accent pattern typicality influenced the retention of the accent pattern: Typical accent patterns were recalled more accurately than atypical ones. These results indicate that both long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge contribute to phonological short-term memory performance.

The Neural Substrates of Recognition Memory for Verbal Information: Spanning the Divide between Short- and Long-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buchsbaum, Bradley R.; Padmanabhan, Aarthi; Berman, Karen Faith

2011-01-01

One of the classic categorical divisions in the history of memory research is that between short-term and long-term memory. Indeed, because memory for the immediate past (a few seconds) and memory for the relatively more remote past (several seconds and beyond) are assumed to rely on distinct neural systems, more often than not, memory research…

The Cognitive and Neural Expression of Semantic Memory Impairment in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early Alzheimer's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joubert, Sven; Brambati, Simona M.; Ansado, Jennyfer; Barbeau, Emmanuel J.; Felician, Olivier; Didic, Mira; Lacombe, Jacinthe; Goldstein, Rachel; Chayer, Celine; Kergoat, Marie-Jeanne

2010-01-01

Semantic deficits in Alzheimer's disease have been widely documented, but little is known about the integrity of semantic memory in the prodromal stage of the illness. The aims of the present study were to: (i) investigate naming abilities and semantic memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), early Alzheimer's disease (AD) compared to…

PKA Increases in the Olfactory Bulb Act as Unconditioned Stimuli and Provide Evidence for Parallel Memory Systems: Pairing Odor with Increased PKA Creates Intermediate- and Long-Term, but Not Short-Term, Memories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grimes, Matthew T.; Harley, Carolyn W.; Darby-King, Andrea; McLean, John H.

2012-01-01

Neonatal odor-preference memory in rat pups is a well-defined associative mammalian memory model dependent on cAMP. Previous work from this laboratory demonstrates three phases of neonatal odor-preference memory: short-term (translation-independent), intermediate-term (translation-dependent), and long-term (transcription- and…

Supporting the self-concept with memory: insight from amnesia

PubMed Central

Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-01-01

We investigated the extent to which personal semantic memory supports the self-concept in individuals with medial temporal lobe amnesia and healthy adults. Participants completed eight ‘I Am’ self-statements. For each of the four highest ranked self-statements, participants completed an open-ended narrative task, during which they provided supporting information indicating why the I Am statement was considered self-descriptive. Participants then completed an episodic probe task, during which they attempted to retrieve six episodic memories for each of these self-statements. Supporting information was scored as episodic, personal semantic or general semantic. In the narrative task, personal semantic memory predominated as self-supporting information in both groups. The amnesic participants generated fewer personal semantic memories than controls to support their self-statements, a deficit that was more pronounced for trait relative to role self-statements. In the episodic probe task, the controls primarily generated unique event memories, but the amnesic participants did not. These findings demonstrate that personal semantic memory, in particular autobiographical fact knowledge, plays a critical role in supporting the self-concept, regardless of the accessibility of episodic memories, and they highlight potential differences in the way traits and roles are supported by personal memory. PMID:25964501

Acute Ethanol Has Biphasic Effects on Short- and Long-Term Memory in Both Foreground and Background Contextual Fear Conditioning in C57BL/6 Mice

PubMed Central

Gulick, Danielle; Gould, Thomas J.

2009-01-01

Background Ethanol is a frequently abused, addictive drug that impairs cognitive function. Ethanol may disrupt cognitive processes by altering attention, short-term memory, and/ or long-term memory. Interestingly, some research suggests that ethanol may enhance cognitive processes at lower doses. The current research examined the dose-dependent effects of ethanol on contextual and cued fear conditioning. In addition, the present studies assessed the importance of stimulus salience in the effects of ethanol and directly compared the effects of ethanol on short-term and long-term memory. Methods This study employed both foreground and background fear conditioning, which differ in the salience of contextual stimuli, and tested conditioning at 4 hours, 24 hours, and 1 week in order to assess the effects of ethanol on short-term and long-term memory. Foreground conditioning consisted of 2 presentations of a foot shock unconditioned stimulus (US) (2 seconds, 0.57 mA). Background conditioning consisted of 2 auditory conditioned stimulus (30 seconds, 85 dB white noise)–foot shock (US; 2 seconds, 0.57 mA) pairings. Results For both foreground and background conditioning, ethanol enhanced short-term and long-term memory for contextual and cued conditioning at a low dose (0.25 g/kg) and impaired short-term and long-term memory for contextual and cued conditioning at a high dose (1.0 g/kg). Conclusions These results suggest that ethanol has long-lasting, biphasic effects on short-term and long-term memory for contextual and cued conditioning. Furthermore, the effects of ethanol on contextual fear conditioning are independent of the salience of the context. PMID:17760787

Consequence of preterm birth in early adolescence: the role of language on auditory short-term memory.

PubMed

Fraello, David; Maller-Kesselman, Jill; Vohr, Betty; Katz, Karol H; Kesler, Shelli; Schneider, Karen; Reiss, Allan; Ment, Laura; Spann, Marisa N

2011-06-01

This study tested the hypothesis that preterm early adolescents' short-term memory is compromised when presented with increasingly complex verbal information and that associated neuroanatomical volumes would differ between preterm and term groups. Forty-nine preterm and 20 term subjects were evaluated at age 12 years with neuropsychological measures and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). There were no differences between groups in simple short-term and working memory. Preterm subjects performed lower on learning and short-term memory tests that included increased verbal complexity. They had reduced right parietal, left temporal, and right temporal white matter volumes and greater bilateral frontal gray and right frontal white matter volumes. There was a positive association between complex working memory and the left hippocampus and frontal white matter in term subjects. While not correlated, memory scores and volumes of cortical regions known to subserve language and memory were reduced in preterm subjects. This study provides evidence of possible mechanisms for learning problems in former preterm infants.

Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crane, Laura; Goddard, Lorna

2008-01-01

Episodic and semantic autobiographical memories were examined in a group of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a control group matched for age, gender and IQ. Results demonstrated a personal episodic memory deficit in the ASD group in the absence of a personal semantic memory deficit, suggesting a deficit dissociation between these…

Divergent short- and long-term effects of acute stress in object recognition memory are mediated by endogenous opioid system activation.

PubMed

Nava-Mesa, Mauricio O; Lamprea, Marisol R; Múnera, Alejandro

2013-11-01

Acute stress induces short-term object recognition memory impairment and elicits endogenous opioid system activation. The aim of this study was thus to evaluate whether opiate system activation mediates the acute stress-induced object recognition memory changes. Adult male Wistar rats were trained in an object recognition task designed to test both short- and long-term memory. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive an intraperitoneal injection of saline, 1 mg/kg naltrexone or 3 mg/kg naltrexone, four and a half hours before the sample trial. Five minutes after the injection, half the subjects were submitted to movement restraint during four hours while the other half remained in their home cages. Non-stressed subjects receiving saline (control) performed adequately during the short-term memory test, while stressed subjects receiving saline displayed impaired performance. Naltrexone prevented such deleterious effect, in spite of the fact that it had no intrinsic effect on short-term object recognition memory. Stressed subjects receiving saline and non-stressed subjects receiving naltrexone performed adequately during the long-term memory test; however, control subjects as well as stressed subjects receiving a high dose of naltrexone performed poorly. Control subjects' dissociated performance during both memory tests suggests that the short-term memory test induced a retroactive interference effect mediated through light opioid system activation; such effect was prevented either by low dose naltrexone administration or by strongly activating the opioid system through acute stress. Both short-term memory retrieval impairment and long-term memory improvement observed in stressed subjects may have been mediated through strong opioid system activation, since they were prevented by high dose naltrexone administration. Therefore, the activation of the opioid system plays a dual modulating role in object recognition memory. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

False memory for orthographically versus semantically similar words in adolescents with dyslexia: a fuzzy-trace theory perspective.

PubMed

Obidziński, Michał; Nieznański, Marek

2017-10-01

The presented research was conducted in order to investigate the connections between developmental dyslexia and the functioning of verbatim and gist memory traces-assumed in the fuzzy-trace theory. The participants were 71 high school students (33 with dyslexia and 38 without learning difficulties). The modified procedure and multinomial model of Stahl and Klauer (simplified conjoint recognition model) was used to collect and analyze data. Results showed statistically significant differences in four of the model parameters: (a) the probability of verbatim trace recollection upon presentation of orthographically similar stimulus was higher in the control than dyslexia group, (b) the probability of verbatim trace recollection upon presentation of semantically similar stimulus was higher in the control than dyslexia group, (c) the probability of gist trace retrieval upon presentation of semantically similar stimulus was higher in the dyslexia than control group, and (d) the probability of gist trace retrieval upon target stimulus presentation (in the semantic condition) was higher in the control than dyslexia group. The obtained results suggest differences of memory functioning in terms of verbatim and gist trace retrieval between people with and without dyslexia on specific, elementary cognitive processes postulated by the fuzzy-trace theory. These can indicate new approaches in the education of persons with developmental dyslexia, focused on specific impairments and the strengths of their memory functioning.

The inferior, anterior temporal lobes and semantic memory clarified: novel evidence from distortion-corrected fMRI.

PubMed

Visser, M; Embleton, K V; Jefferies, E; Parker, G J; Ralph, M A Lambon

2010-05-01

The neural basis of semantic memory generates considerable debate. Semantic dementia results from bilateral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) atrophy and gives rise to a highly specific impairment of semantic memory, suggesting that this region is a critical neural substrate for semantic processing. Recent rTMS experiments with neurologically-intact participants also indicate that the ATL are a necessary substrate for semantic memory. Exactly which regions within the ATL are important for semantic memory are difficult to detect from these methods (because the damage in SD covers a large part of the ATL). Functional neuroimaging might provide important clues about which specific areas exhibit activation that correlates with normal semantic performance. Neuroimaging studies, however, have not consistently found anterior temporal lobe activation in semantic tasks. A recent meta-analysis indicates that this inconsistency may be due to a collection of technical limitations associated with previous studies, including a reduced field-of-view and magnetic susceptibility artefacts associated with standard gradient echo fMRI. We conducted an fMRI study of semantic memory using a combination of techniques which improve sensitivity to ATL activations whilst preserving whole-brain coverage. As expected from SD patients and ATL rTMS experiments, this method revealed bilateral temporal activation extending from the inferior temporal lobe along the fusiform gyrus to the anterior temporal regions, bilaterally. We suggest that the inferior, anterior temporal lobe region makes a crucial contribution to semantic cognition and utilising this version of fMRI will enable further research on the semantic role of the ATL. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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.

The Category Cued Recall test in very mild Alzheimer's disease: discriminative validity and correlation with semantic memory functions.

PubMed

Vogel, A; Mortensen, E L; Gade, A; Waldemar, G

2007-01-01

Episodic memory tests that measure cued recall may be particularly effective in the diagnosis of early Alzheimer's disease (AD) because they examine both episodic and semantic memory functions. The Category Cued Recall (CCR) test provides superordinate semantic cues at encoding and retrieval, and high discriminative validity has been claimed for this test. The aim of this study was to investigate the discriminative validity for this test when compared with the 10-word memory list from Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS-cog) that measures free recall. The clinical diagnosis of AD was taken as the standard. It was also investigated whether the two episodic memory tests correlated with measures of semantic memory. The tests were administered to 35 patients with very mild AD (Mini Mental State Examination score >22) and 28 control subjects. Both tests had high sensitivity (>88%) with high specificity (>89%). One out of the five semantic memory tests was significantly correlated to performances on CCR, whereas delayed recall on the ADAS-cog memory test was significantly correlated to two semantic tests. In conclusion, the discriminative validity of the CCR test and the ADAS-cog memory test was equivalent in very mild AD. This may be because CCR did not tap more semantic processes, which are impaired in the earliest phases of AD, than a test of free recall.

The influence of autonomic arousal and semantic relatedness on memory for emotional words.

PubMed

Buchanan, Tony W; Etzel, Joset A; Adolphs, Ralph; Tranel, Daniel

2006-07-01

Increased memory for emotional stimuli is a well-documented phenomenon. Emotional arousal during the encoding of a stimulus is one mediator of this memory enhancement. Other variables such as semantic relatedness also play a role in the enhanced memory for emotional stimuli, especially for verbal stimuli. Research has not addressed the contributions of emotional arousal, indexed by self-report and autonomic measures, and semantic relatedness on memory performance. Twenty young adults (10 women) were presented neutral-unrelated words, school-related words, moderately arousing emotional words, and highly arousing taboo words while heart rate and skin conductance were measured. Memory was tested with free recall and recognition tests. Results showed that taboo words, which were both semantically related and high arousal were remembered best. School-related words, which were high on semantic relatedness but low on arousal, were remembered better than the moderately arousing emotional words and semantically unrelated neutral words. Psychophysiological responses showed that within the moderately arousing emotional and neutral word groups, those words eliciting greater autonomic activity were better remembered than words that did not elicit such activity. These results demonstrate additive effects of semantic relatedness and emotional arousal on memory. Relatedness confers an advantage to memory (as in the school-words), but the combination of relatedness and arousal (as in the taboo words) results in the best memory performance.

The lasting memory enhancements of retrospective attention

PubMed Central

Reaves, Sarah; Strunk, Jonathan; Phillips, Shekinah; Verhaeghen, Paul; Duarte, Audrey

2016-01-01

Behavioral research has shown that spatial cues that orient attention toward task relevant items being maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) enhance item memory accuracy. However, it is unknown if these retrospective attentional cues (“retro-cues”) enhance memory beyond typical short-term memory delays. It is also unknown whether retro-cues affect the spatial information associated with VSTM representations. Emerging evidence suggests that processes that affect short-term memory maintenance may also affect long-term memory (LTM) but little work has investigated the role of attention in LTM. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we investigated the duration of retrospective attention effects and the impact of retrospective attention manipulations on VSTM representations. Results revealed that retro-cueing improved both VSTM and LTM memory accuracy and that posterior maximal ERPs observed during VSTM maintenance predicted subsequent LTM performance. N2pc ERPs associated with attentional selection were attenuated by retro-cueing suggesting that retrospective attention may disrupt maintenance of spatial configural information in VSTM. Collectively, these findings suggest that retrospective attention can alter the structure of memory representations, which impacts memory performance beyond short-term memory delays. PMID:27038756

Lateral and medial prefrontal contributions to emotion generation by semantic elaboration during episodic encoding.

PubMed

Kaneda, Takumi; Shigemune, Yayoi; Tsukiura, Takashi

2017-02-01

Memories for emotion-laden stimuli are remembered more accurately than those for neutral stimuli. Although this enhancement reflects stimulus-driven modulation of memory by emotions, functional neuroimaging evidence of the interacting mechanisms between emotions generated by intentional processes, such as semantic elaboration, and memory is scarce. The present fMRI study investigated how encoding-related activation is modulated by emotions generated during the process of semantic elaboration. During encoding with fMRI, healthy young adults viewed neutral (target) pictures either passively or with semantic elaboration. In semantic elaboration, participants imagined background stories related to the pictures. Encoding trials with semantic elaboration were subdivided into conditions in which participants imagined negative, positive, or neutral stories. One week later, memories for target pictures were tested. In behavioral results, memories for target pictures were significantly enhanced by semantic elaboration, compared to passive viewing, and the memory enhancement was more remarkable when negative or positive stories were imagined. fMRI results demonstrated that activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) were greater during the encoding of target pictures with semantic elaboration than those with passive viewing, and that these activations further increased during encoding with semantic elaboration of emotional stories than of neutral stories. Functional connectivity between the left inferior frontal gyrus and dmPFC/hippocampus during encoding significantly predicted retrieval accuracies of memories encoded with self-generated emotional stories. These findings suggest that networks including the left inferior frontal region, dmPFC, and hippocampus could contribute to the modulation of memories encoded with the emotion generation.

Short-term memory across eye blinks.

PubMed

Irwin, David E

2014-01-01

The effect of eye blinks on short-term memory was examined in two experiments. On each trial, participants viewed an initial display of coloured, oriented lines, then after a retention interval they viewed a test display that was either identical or different by one feature. Participants kept their eyes open throughout the retention interval on some blocks of trials, whereas on others they made a single eye blink. Accuracy was measured as a function of the number of items in the display to determine the capacity of short-term memory on blink and no-blink trials. In separate blocks of trials participants were instructed to remember colour only, orientation only, or both colour and orientation. Eye blinks reduced short-term memory capacity by approximately 0.6-0.8 items for both feature and conjunction stimuli. A third, control, experiment showed that a button press during the retention interval had no effect on short-term memory capacity, indicating that the effect of an eye blink was not due to general motoric dual-task interference. Eye blinks might instead reduce short-term memory capacity by interfering with attention-based rehearsal processes.

Short-term memory predictions across the lifespan: monitoring span before and after conducting a task.

PubMed

Bertrand, Julie Marilyne; Moulin, Chris John Anthony; Souchay, Céline

2017-05-01

Our objective was to explore metamemory in short-term memory across the lifespan. Five age groups participated in this study: 3 groups of children (4-13 years old), and younger and older adults. We used a three-phase task: prediction-span-postdiction. For prediction and postdiction phases, participants reported with a Yes/No response if they could recall in order a series of images. For the span task, they had to actually recall such series. From 4 years old, children have some ability to monitor their short-term memory and are able to adjust their prediction after experiencing the task. However, accuracy still improves significantly until adolescence. Although the older adults had a lower span, they were as accurate as young adults in their evaluation, suggesting that metamemory is unimpaired for short-term memory tasks in older adults. •We investigate metamemory for short-term memory tasks across the lifespan. •We find younger children cannot accurately predict their span length. •Older adults are accurate in predicting their span length. •People's metamemory accuracy was related to their short-term memory span.

The effects of general anaesthesia on memory in children: a comparison between propofol and sevoflurane.

PubMed

Yin, J; Wang, S-L; Liu, X-B

2014-02-01

We studied the effects of general anaesthesia on memory 7 days and 3 months following elective hernia surgery. Sixty children aged between 7 and 13 years were randomly allocated to receive either propofol or sevoflurane. Memory was classified into immediate, short-term and long-term memory and assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Propofol impaired short-term memory 7 days postoperatively compared with pre-operative values (image recalling: p = 0.02, figure recognition: p = 0.01, visual reproduction: p = 0.03) but recovered to baseline levels 3 months following surgery. Neither general anaesthetic affected immediate or long-term memory. We conclude that propofol impairs short-term memory postoperatively in children. © 2013 The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland.

Hippocampal size is related to short-term true and false memory, and right fusiform size is related to long-term true and false memory.

PubMed

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Loftus, Elizabeth F; He, Qinghua; Lei, Xuemei; Dong, Qi; Lin, Chongde

2016-11-01

There is a keen interest in identifying specific brain regions that are related to individual differences in true and false memories. Previous functional neuroimaging studies showed that activities in the hippocampus, right fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus were associated with true and false memories, but no study thus far has examined whether the structures of these brain regions are associated with short-term and long-term true and false memories. To address that question, the current study analyzed data from 205 healthy young adults, who had valid data from both structural brain imaging and a misinformation task. In the misinformation task, subjects saw the crime scenarios, received misinformation, and took memory tests about the crimes an hour later and again after 1.5 years. Results showed that bilateral hippocampal volume was associated with short-term true and false memories, whereas right fusiform gyrus volume and surface area were associated with long-term true and false memories. This study provides the first evidence for the structural neural bases of individual differences in short-term and long-term true and false memories.

The relationships between memory systems and sleep stages.

PubMed

Rauchs, Géraldine; Desgranges, Béatrice; Foret, Jean; Eustache, Francis

2005-06-01

Sleep function remains elusive despite our rapidly increasing comprehension of the processes generating and maintaining the different sleep stages. Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that sleep is involved in the off-line reprocessing of recently-acquired memories. In this review, we summarize the main results obtained in the field of sleep and memory consolidation in both animals and humans, and try to connect sleep stages with the different memory systems. To this end, we have collated data obtained using several methodological approaches, including electrophysiological recordings of neuronal ensembles, post-training modifications of sleep architecture, sleep deprivation and functional neuroimaging studies. Broadly speaking, all the various studies emphasize the fact that the four long-term memory systems (procedural memory, perceptual representation system, semantic and episodic memory, according to Tulving's SPI model; Tulving, 1995) benefit either from non-rapid eye movement (NREM) (not just SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or from both sleep stages. Tulving's classification of memory systems appears more pertinent than the declarative/non-declarative dichotomy when it comes to understanding the role of sleep in memory. Indeed, this model allows us to resolve several contradictions, notably the fact that episodic and semantic memory (the two memory systems encompassed in declarative memory) appear to rely on different sleep stages. Likewise, this model provides an explanation for why the acquisition of various types of skills (perceptual-motor, sensory-perceptual and cognitive skills) and priming effects, subserved by different brain structures but all designated by the generic term of implicit or non-declarative memory, may not benefit from the same sleep stages.

Alpha Oscillations during Incidental Encoding Predict Subsequent Memory for New "Foil" Information.

PubMed

Vogelsang, David A; Gruber, Matthias; Bergström, Zara M; Ranganath, Charan; Simons, Jon S

2018-05-01

People can employ adaptive strategies to increase the likelihood that previously encoded information will be successfully retrieved. One such strategy is to constrain retrieval toward relevant information by reimplementing the neurocognitive processes that were engaged during encoding. Using EEG, we examined the temporal dynamics with which constraining retrieval toward semantic versus nonsemantic information affects the processing of new "foil" information encountered during a memory test. Time-frequency analysis of EEG data acquired during an initial study phase revealed that semantic compared with nonsemantic processing was associated with alpha decreases in a left frontal electrode cluster from around 600 msec after stimulus onset. Successful encoding of semantic versus nonsemantic foils during a subsequent memory test was related to decreases in alpha oscillatory activity in the same left frontal electrode cluster, which emerged relatively late in the trial at around 1000-1600 msec after stimulus onset. Across participants, left frontal alpha power elicited by semantic processing during the study phase correlated significantly with left frontal alpha power associated with semantic foil encoding during the memory test. Furthermore, larger left frontal alpha power decreases elicited by semantic foil encoding during the memory test predicted better subsequent semantic foil recognition in an additional surprise foil memory test, although this effect did not reach significance. These findings indicate that constraining retrieval toward semantic information involves reimplementing semantic encoding operations that are mediated by alpha oscillations and that such reimplementation occurs at a late stage of memory retrieval, perhaps reflecting additional monitoring processes.

Differential pattern of semantic memory organization between bipolar I and II disorders.

PubMed

Chang, Jae Seung; Choi, Sungwon; Ha, Kyooseob; Ha, Tae Hyon; Cho, Hyun Sang; Choi, Jung Eun; Cha, Boseok; Moon, Eunsoo

2011-06-01

Semantic cognition is one of the key factors in psychosocial functioning. The aim of this study was to explore the differences in pattern of semantic memory organization between euthymic patients with bipolar I and II disorders using the category fluency task. Study participants included 23 euthymic subjects with bipolar I disorder, 23 matched euthymic subjects with bipolar II disorder and 23 matched control subjects. All participants were assessed for verbal learning, recall, learning strategies, and fluency. The combined methods of hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling were used to compare the pattern of semantic memory organization among the three groups. Quantitative measures of verbal learning, recall, learning strategies, and fluency did not differ between the three groups. A two-cluster structure of semantic memory organization was identified for the three groups. Semantic structure was more disorganized in the bipolar I disorder group compared to the bipolar II disorder. In addition, patients with bipolar II disorder used less elaborate strategies of semantic memory organization than those of controls. Compared to healthy controls, strategies for categorization in semantic memory appear to be less knowledge-based in patients with bipolar disorders. A differential pattern of semantic memory organization between bipolar I and II disorders indicates a higher risk of cognitive abnormalities in patients with bipolar I disorder compared to patients with bipolar II disorder. Exploring qualitative nature of neuropsychological domains may provide an explanatory insight into the characteristic behaviors of patients with bipolar disorders. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Remembering episodic memories is not necessary for forgetting of negative words: Semantic retrieval can cause forgetting of negative words.

PubMed

Kobayashi, Masanori; Tanno, Yoshihiko

2015-06-01

Retrieval of a memory can induce forgetting of other related memories, which is known as retrieval-induced forgetting. Although most studies have investigated retrieval-induced forgetting by remembering episodic memories, this also can occur by remembering semantic memories. The present study shows that retrieval of semantic memories can lead to forgetting of negative words. In two experiments, participants learned words and then engaged in retrieval practice where they were asked to recall words related to the learned words from semantic memory. Finally, participants completed a stem-cued recall test for the learned words. The results showed forgetting of neutral and negative words, which was characteristic of semantic retrieval-induced forgetting. A certain degree of overlapping features, except same learning episode, is sufficient to cause retrieval-induced forgetting of negative words. Given the present results, we conclude that retrieval-induced forgetting of negative words does not require recollection of episodic memories.

Semantic memory retrieval circuit: role of pre-SMA, caudate, and thalamus.

PubMed

Hart, John; Maguire, Mandy J; Motes, Michael; Mudar, Raksha Anand; Chiang, Hsueh-Sheng; Womack, Kyle B; Kraut, Michael A

2013-07-01

We propose that pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA)-thalamic interactions govern processes fundamental to semantic retrieval of an integrated object memory. At the onset of semantic retrieval, pre-SMA initiates electrical interactions between multiple cortical regions associated with semantic memory subsystems encodings as indexed by an increase in theta-band EEG power. This starts between 100-150 ms after stimulus presentation and is sustained throughout the task. We posit that this activity represents initiation of the object memory search, which continues in searching for an object memory. When the correct memory is retrieved, there is a high beta-band EEG power increase, which reflects communication between pre-SMA and thalamus, designates the end of the search process and resultant in object retrieval from multiple semantic memory subsystems. This high beta signal is also detected in cortical regions. This circuit is modulated by the caudate nuclei to facilitate correct and suppress incorrect target memories. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Knowledge acquisition is governed by striatal prediction errors.

PubMed

Pine, Alex; Sadeh, Noa; Ben-Yakov, Aya; Dudai, Yadin; Mendelsohn, Avi

2018-04-26

Discrepancies between expectations and outcomes, or prediction errors, are central to trial-and-error learning based on reward and punishment, and their neurobiological basis is well characterized. It is not known, however, whether the same principles apply to declarative memory systems, such as those supporting semantic learning. Here, we demonstrate with fMRI that the brain parametrically encodes the degree to which new factual information violates expectations based on prior knowledge and beliefs-most prominently in the ventral striatum, and cortical regions supporting declarative memory encoding. These semantic prediction errors determine the extent to which information is incorporated into long-term memory, such that learning is superior when incoming information counters strong incorrect recollections, thereby eliciting large prediction errors. Paradoxically, by the same account, strong accurate recollections are more amenable to being supplanted by misinformation, engendering false memories. These findings highlight a commonality in brain mechanisms and computational rules that govern declarative and nondeclarative learning, traditionally deemed dissociable.

Subthreshold pharmacological and genetic approaches to analyzing CaV2.1-mediated NMDA receptor signaling in short-term memory.

PubMed

Takahashi, Eiki; Niimi, Kimie; Itakura, Chitoshi

2010-10-25

Ca(V)2.1 is highly expressed in the nervous system and plays an essential role in the presynaptic modulation of neurotransmitter release machinery. Recently, the antiepileptic drug levetiracetam was reported to inhibit presynaptic Ca(V)2.1 functions, reducing glutamate release in the hippocampus, although the precise physiological role of Ca(V)2.1-regulated synaptic functions in cognitive performance at the system level remains unknown. This study examined whether Ca(V)2.1 mediates hippocampus-dependent spatial short-term memory using the object location and Y-maze tests, and perirhinal cortex-dependent nonspatial short-term memory using the object recognition test, via a combined pharmacological and genetic approach. Heterozygous rolling Nagoya (rol/+) mice carrying the Ca(V)2.1alpha(1) mutation had normal spatial and nonspatial short-term memory. A 100mg/kg dose of levetiracetam, which is ineffective in wild-type controls, blocked spatial short-term memory in rol/+ mice. At 5mg/kg, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor blocker (+/-)-3-(2-carboxypiperazin-4-yl)-propyl-1-phosphonic acid (CPP), which is ineffective in wild-type controls, also blocked the spatial short-term memory in rol/+ mice. Furthermore, a combination of subthreshold doses of levetiracetam (25 mg/kg) and CPP (2.5mg/kg) triggered a spatial short-term memory deficit in rol/+ mice, but not in wild-type controls. Similar patterns of nonspatial short-term memory were observed in wild-type and rol/+ mice when injected with levetiracetam (0-300 mg/kg). These results indicate that Ca(V)2.1-mediated NMDA receptor signaling is critical in hippocampus-dependent spatial short-term memory and differs in various regions. The combination subthreshold pharmacological and genetic approach presented here is easily performed and can be used to study functional signaling pathways in neuronal circuits. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Generation and context memory.

PubMed

Mulligan, Neil W; Lozito, Jeffrey P; Rosner, Zachary A

2006-07-01

Generation enhances memory for occurrence but may not enhance other aspects of memory. The present study further delineates the negative generation effect in context memory reported in N. W. Mulligan (2004). First, the negative generation effect occurred for perceptual attributes of the target item (its color and font) but not for extratarget aspects of context (location and background color). Second, nonvisual generation tasks with either semantic or nonsemantic generation rules (antonym and rhyme generation, respectively) produced the same pattern of results. In contrast, a visual (or data-driven) generation task (letter transposition) did not disrupt context memory for color. Third, generating nonwords produced no effect on item memory but persisted in producing a negative effect on context memory for target attributes, implying that (a) the negative generation effect in context memory is not mediated by semantic encoding, and (b) the negative effect on context memory can be dissociated from the positive effect on item memory. The results are interpreted in terms of the processing account of generation. The original, perceptual-conceptual version of this account is too narrow, but a modified processing account, based on a more generic visual versus nonvisual processing distinction, accommodates the results. Copyright 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Semantic memory assessment in 15 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

PubMed

Hervieu-Bègue, M; Rouaud, O; Graule Petot, A; Catteau, A; Giroud, M

2016-01-01

A total of 30 to 50% of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients suffer from cognitive disorders. The aim of the study is to characterize these disorders and to assess semantic memory in non-demented ALS patients. The secondary aim is to look for a link between disease type and neuropsychological characteristics. Patients were followed in an ALS center in Dijon. The following neuropsychological tests were used in this study: Folstein test, BREF test, verbal fluency, Isaac test, GRESEM test and TOP 30 test. Fifteen ALS patients were included. Nine of them (60%) were suffering from a semantic memory disorder. There was no correlation between ALS characteristics and the semantic memory disorder. This is the first study to reveal a semantic memory disorder in ALS. This result accentuates the hypothesis that ALS and semantic dementia are two phenotypes of the same degenerative process linked to TDP 43 proteinopathy. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

School-aged children can benefit from audiovisual semantic congruency during memory encoding.

PubMed

Heikkilä, Jenni; Tiippana, Kaisa

2016-05-01

Although we live in a multisensory world, children's memory has been usually studied concentrating on only one sensory modality at a time. In this study, we investigated how audiovisual encoding affects recognition memory. Children (n = 114) from three age groups (8, 10 and 12 years) memorized auditory or visual stimuli presented with a semantically congruent, incongruent or non-semantic stimulus in the other modality during encoding. Subsequent recognition memory performance was better for auditory or visual stimuli initially presented together with a semantically congruent stimulus in the other modality than for stimuli accompanied by a non-semantic stimulus in the other modality. This congruency effect was observed for pictures presented with sounds, for sounds presented with pictures, for spoken words presented with pictures and for written words presented with spoken words. The present results show that semantically congruent multisensory experiences during encoding can improve memory performance in school-aged children.

Declarative memory impairments following a military combat course: parallel neuropsychological and biochemical investigations.

PubMed

Piérard, Christophe; Béracochéa, Daniel; Pérès, Michel; Jouanin, Jean-Claude; Liscia, Pierrette; Satabin, Pascale; Martin, Serge; Testylier, Guy; Guézennec, Charles Yannick; Beaumont, Maurice

2004-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact on several forms of memory and metabolism of a 5-day combat course including heavy and continuous physical activities and sleep deprivation. Mnemonic performance and biochemical parameters of 21 male soldiers were examined before and at the end of the course. Our results showed that short-term memory (memory span, visual memory, audiovisual association) and long-term memory were significantly impaired, whereas short-term spatial memory and planning tasks were spared. Parallel biochemical analysis showed an adaptation of energy metabolism. The observed decrease in glycaemia may be partly responsible for the long-term memory impairment, whereas the decreases in plasma cholinesterases and choline may be involved in the short-term memory deterioration. However, there are also many other reasons for the observed memory changes, one of them being chronic sleep deprivation. Copyright 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Perspective Effects during Reading: Evidence from Text Change-Detection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bohan, Jason; Filik, Ruth

2018-01-01

We report two text change-detection studies in which we investigate the influence of reading perspective on text memory. In Experiment 1 participants read from the perspective of one of two characters in a series of short stories, and word changes were either semantically close or distant. Participants correctly reported more changes to…

Personal semantic and episodic autobiographical memories in Korsakoff syndrome: A comparison of interview methods.

PubMed

Rensen, Yvonne C M; Kessels, Roy P C; Migo, Ellen M; Wester, Arie J; Eling, Paul A T M; Kopelman, Michael D

2017-08-01

The temporal gradient in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome has been of particular interest in the literature, as many studies have found evidence for a steep temporal gradient, but others have observed more uniform remote memory impairment across all past time periods. Inconsistencies might be the result of the nature of remote memory impairment under study (i.e., nonpersonal or autobiographical memory) and of methodological differences in the examination of remote memory loss. The aim of this study was to examine whether differences between autobiographical memory interview (AMI) and autobiographical interview (AI) procedures influence the presence of a temporal gradient in semantic and episodic autobiographical memory in Korsakoff patients. The procedure used in the present study combined the AMI and AI into one study session. We compared the performance of 20 patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and 27 healthy controls. First, participants were asked to recall knowledge from different life periods. Second, participants were asked to recall memories from five life periods. Thirdly, participants were asked to rate their subjective experience of each event recalled on a 5-point scale. Finally, we analyzed the findings in terms of all the memories recalled versus the first memory from each life-period only. Both the AMI and the AI showed a temporally graded retrograde amnesia in the Korsakoff patients for personal semantic and episodic autobiographical memories. The pattern of amnesia in Korsakoff patients was not affected by examining only one event per life-period. Subjective ratings of recalled memories were largely comparable between the groups. The findings were generally consistent across the AMI and AI. Varying the number of events did not affect the pattern of the gradient. Hence, the temporal gradient in Korsakoff patients is not an artefact of either the AMI or the AI method.

Memory timeline: Brain ERP C250 (not P300) is an early biomarker of short-term storage.

PubMed

Chapman, Robert M; Gardner, Margaret N; Mapstone, Mark; Dupree, Haley M; Antonsdottir, Inga M

2015-04-16

Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) offer a quantitative link between neurophysiological activity and cognitive performance. ERPs were measured while young adults performed a task that required storing a relevant stimulus in short-term memory. Using principal components analysis, ERP component C250 (maximum at 250 ms post-stimulus) was extracted from a set of ERPs that were separately averaged for various task conditions, including stimulus relevancy and stimulus sequence within a trial. C250 was more positive in response to task-specific stimuli that were successfully stored in short-term memory. This relationship between C250 and short-term memory storage of a stimulus was confirmed by a memory probe recall test where the behavioral recall of a stimulus was highly correlated with its C250 amplitude. ERP component P300 (and its subcomponents of P3a and P3b, which are commonly thought to represent memory operations) did not show a pattern of activation reflective of storing task-relevant stimuli. C250 precedes the P300, indicating that initial short-term memory storage may occur earlier than previously believed. Additionally, because C250 is so strongly predictive of a stimulus being stored in short-term memory, C250 may provide a strong index of early memory operations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Episodic, semantic and procedural memory in a case of amnesia at an early age.

PubMed

Ostergaard, A L

1987-01-01

The patient C.C. developed an amnesic syndrome at the age of 10 yr. Like adult amnesics, C.C. demonstrated impaired episodic memory for both verbal and visual materials although immediate memory span was spared. However, striking deficits were also observed on a wide variety of semantic memory tasks, including reading vocabulary and verbal fluency tests, semantic classification and lexical decision tasks and tests of verbal intelligence. On the other hand, C.C. showed normal learning and retention of two procedural tasks. It was argued that this evidence is inconsistent with the view that the amnesic syndrome represents a selective defect of episodic memory that leaves semantic memory relatively unaffected.

Cognitive impairment and memory loss associated with histoplasmosis: a case study.

PubMed

Loughan, Ashlee R; Perna, Robert; Hertza, Jeremy

2014-01-01

Histoplasmosis is a rare disease caused by inhalation of the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. It can spread via cerebral circulation to the central nervous system as a manifestation of a disseminated infection; particularly in patients with immune suppression, which can result in isolated ring-enhancing lesions and inflammation in the brain. Of the reported disseminated histoplasmosis cases (approximately 1 in 2000 per year), only 5-20% have evidence of central nervous system involvement. This paper reviews a single case study of a 57-year-old female diagnosed with disseminated CNS histoplasmosis. Patient's complaints included reduced short-term memory, word-finding problems, and difficulty organizing, making decisions, getting lost while driving, recalling names, retaining information while reading, and slowed processing speed. There was also a history of mild depression and anxiety. Direct testing revealed deficits in multiple cognitive domains including complex attention, processing speed, semantic fluency, visual scanning, motor speed, set-shifting, naming, nonverbal memory, and verbal memory. Neuropsychological deficits suggest cortical and subcortical brain dysfunction, including anterior, temporal, and mesial-temporal regions. This case illustrates the need for neuropsychologists to understand histoplasmosis, the related pathophysiology, and the neuropsychological impact; particularly with the potential for delayed progression.

Augmented Reality for the Assessment of Children's Spatial Memory in Real Settings

PubMed Central

Juan, M.-Carmen; Mendez-Lopez, Magdalena; Perez-Hernandez, Elena; Albiol-Perez, Sergio

2014-01-01

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user's movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children's skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5–6 year olds) and primary school (7–8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent's questionnaire about a child's everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task's usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement. PMID:25438146

Augmented reality for the assessment of children's spatial memory in real settings.

PubMed

Juan, M-Carmen; Mendez-Lopez, Magdalena; Perez-Hernandez, Elena; Albiol-Perez, Sergio

2014-01-01

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user's movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children's skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5-6 year olds) and primary school (7-8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent's questionnaire about a child's everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task's usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement.

Longitudinal Study of a Novel, Performance-based Measure of Daily Function

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-06-01

have functional impairments, and healthy age matched controls on the UPSA, as well as measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory ...controls on the UPSA, as well as measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with...diagnosis have functional impairments, and healthy age matched controls on the UPSA, as well as measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic

A Functional Examination of Intermediate Cognitive Processes.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-01-01

memory ) and a body of accumulated information referred to as " semantic memory ". In contrast with episodic memory (which most psychological experiments...referents of input signals. (p. 386) But as Eysenck (1984) points out, there is "no precise dividing line" betveen episodic and semantic memory and although...involve), Tulving suggests that semantic memory is the more crucial to 5. .P, 31 performing everyday tasks: It is a mental thesaurus, the

Robust training attenuates TBI-induced deficits in reference and working memory on the radial 8-arm maze

PubMed Central

Sebastian, Veronica; Diallo, Aissatou; Ling, Douglas S. F.; Serrano, Peter A.

2013-01-01

Globally, it is estimated that nearly 10 million people sustain severe brain injuries leading to hospitalization and/or death every year. Amongst survivors, traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in a wide variety of physical, emotional and cognitive deficits. The most common cognitive deficit associated with TBI is memory loss, involving impairments in spatial reference and working memory. However, the majority of research thus far has characterized the deficits associated with TBI on either reference or working memory systems separately, without investigating how they interact within a single task. Thus, we examined the effects of TBI on short-term working and long-term reference memory using the radial 8-arm maze (RAM) with a sequence of four baited and four unbaited arms. Subjects were given 10 daily trials for 6 days followed by a memory retrieval test 2 weeks after training. Multiple training trials not only provide robust training, but also test the subjects' ability to frequently update short-term memory while learning the reference rules of the task. Our results show that TBI significantly impaired short-term working memory function on previously acquired spatial information but has little effect on long-term reference memory. Additionally, TBI significantly increased working memory errors during acquisition and reference memory errors during retention testing 2 weeks later. With a longer recovery period after TBI, the robust RAM training mitigated the reference memory deficit in retention but not the short-term working memory deficit during acquisition. These results identify the resiliency and vulnerabilities of short-term working and long-term reference memory to TBI in the context of robust training. The data highlight the role of cognitive training and other behavioral remediation strategies implicated in attenuating deficits associated with TBI. PMID:23653600

The role of sleep spindles and slow-wave activity in integrating new information in semantic memory.

PubMed

Tamminen, Jakke; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Lewis, Penelope A

2013-09-25

Assimilating new information into existing knowledge is a fundamental part of consolidating new memories and allowing them to guide behavior optimally and is vital for conceptual knowledge (semantic memory), which is accrued over many years. Sleep is important for memory consolidation, but its impact upon assimilation of new information into existing semantic knowledge has received minimal examination. Here, we examined the integration process by training human participants on novel words with meanings that fell into densely or sparsely populated areas of semantic memory in two separate sessions. Overnight sleep was polysomnographically monitored after each training session and recall was tested immediately after training, after a night of sleep, and 1 week later. Results showed that participants learned equal numbers of both word types, thus equating amount and difficulty of learning across the conditions. Measures of word recognition speed showed a disadvantage for novel words in dense semantic neighborhoods, presumably due to interference from many semantically related concepts, suggesting that the novel words had been successfully integrated into semantic memory. Most critically, semantic neighborhood density influenced sleep architecture, with participants exhibiting more sleep spindles and slow-wave activity after learning the sparse compared with the dense neighborhood words. These findings provide the first evidence that spindles and slow-wave activity mediate integration of new information into existing semantic networks.

How Emotional Pictures Influence Visuospatial Binding in Short-Term Memory in Ageing and Alzheimer's Disease?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borg, Celine; Leroy, Nicolas; Favre, Emilie; Laurent, Bernard; Thomas-Anterion, Catherine

2011-01-01

The present study examines the prediction that emotion can facilitate short-term memory. Nevertheless, emotion also recruits attention to process information, thereby disrupting short-term memory when tasks involve high attentional resources. In this way, we aimed to determine whether there is a differential influence of emotional information on…

Short-Term Memory of Children with Mental Retardation: Structural Defects or Control Deficits.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katims, David S.

The short-term memory of 24 retarded and 24 nonretarded individuals, aged 10 to 14, under conditions of restricted cognitive strategy use was investigated. An attempt was made to determine whether short-term memory difficulties of persons with mental retardation are caused by deficits in voluntary cognitive strategies, such as the organization and…

A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of Memorial Development during Early Grade School.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kunzinger, Edward L., III

1985-01-01

Overt rehearsal and free recall performance was analyzed longitudinally in two experimental testing sessions at 7 and later at 9 years of age. Measures of short- and long-term memory recall, and two measures of input processing were obtained. Significant increases between age levels were exhibited by all variables except short-term memory.…

The Genetic Components of Verbal Divergent Thinking and Short Term Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pezzullo, Thomas R.; Madaus, George F.

A study of twins was conducted to determine the presence of an hereditary component in short term memory and in three aspects of verbal divergent thinking--flexibility, fluency, and originality. Results showed the existence of a significant genetic component in the trait of short term memory, while none was found in verbal divergent thinking. (AG)

Short-Term Memory Retrievals and Expectation in On-Line Sentence Comprehension: The Effects of Recent Linguistic Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bartek, Brian D.

2011-01-01

Understanding how short-term memory shapes sentence comprehension processes is a long-standing topic in psycholinguistics. This thesis pursues new insights on two facets of short-term memory's role in sentence comprehension: (a) The first four experiments search for, and obtain, concrete evidence that locality effects, or increased integration…

Poor Phonemic Discrimination Does Not Underlie Poor Verbal Short-Term Memory in Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Purser, Harry R. M.; Jarrold, Christopher

2013-01-01

Individuals with Down syndrome tend to have a marked impairment of verbal short-term memory. The chief aim of this study was to investigate whether phonemic discrimination contributes to this deficit. The secondary aim was to investigate whether phonological representations are degraded in verbal short-term memory in people with Down syndrome…

Short-Term Memory for Order but Not for Item Information Is Impaired in Developmental Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hachmann, Wibke M.; Bogaerts, Louisa; Szmalec, Arnaud; Woumans, Evy; Duyck, Wouter; Job, Remo

2014-01-01

Recent findings suggest that people with dyslexia experience difficulties with the learning of serial order information during the transition from short-to long-term memory (Szmalec et al. "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition" 37(5): 1270-1279, 2011). At the same time, models of short-term memory…

Searching for the Hebb effect in Down syndrome: evidence for a dissociation between verbal short-term memory and domain-general learning of serial order.

PubMed

Mosse, E K; Jarrold, C

2010-04-01

The Hebb effect is a form of repetition-driven long-term learning that is thought to provide an analogue for the processes involved in new word learning. Other evidence suggests that verbal short-term memory also constrains now vocabulary acquisition, but if the Hebb effect is independent of short-term memory, then it may be possible to demonstrate its preservation in a sample of individuals with Down syndrome, who typically show a verbal short-term memory deficit alongside surprising relative strengths in vocabulary. In two experiments, individuals both with and without Down syndrome (matched for receptive vocabulary) completed immediate serial recall tasks incorporating a Hebb repetition paradigm in either verbal or visuospatial conditions. Both groups demonstrated equivalent benefit from Hebb repetition, despite individuals with Down syndrome showing significantly lower verbal short-term memory spans. The resultant Hebb effect was equivalent across verbal and visuospatial domains. These studies suggest that the Hebb effect is essentially preserved within Down syndrome, implying that explicit verbal short-term memory is dissociable from potentially more implicit Hebb learning. The relative strength in receptive vocabulary observed in Down syndrome may therefore be supported by largely intact long-term as opposed to short-term serial order learning. This in turn may have implications for teaching methods and interventions that present new phonological material to individuals with Down syndrome.

Supporting the self-concept with memory: insight from amnesia.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D; Verfaellie, Mieke

2015-12-01

We investigated the extent to which personal semantic memory supports the self-concept in individuals with medial temporal lobe amnesia and healthy adults. Participants completed eight 'I Am' self-statements. For each of the four highest ranked self-statements, participants completed an open-ended narrative task, during which they provided supporting information indicating why the I Am statement was considered self-descriptive. Participants then completed an episodic probe task, during which they attempted to retrieve six episodic memories for each of these self-statements. Supporting information was scored as episodic, personal semantic or general semantic. In the narrative task, personal semantic memory predominated as self-supporting information in both groups. The amnesic participants generated fewer personal semantic memories than controls to support their self-statements, a deficit that was more pronounced for trait relative to role self-statements. In the episodic probe task, the controls primarily generated unique event memories, but the amnesic participants did not. These findings demonstrate that personal semantic memory, in particular autobiographical fact knowledge, plays a critical role in supporting the self-concept, regardless of the accessibility of episodic memories, and they highlight potential differences in the way traits and roles are supported by personal memory. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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.

Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

PubMed Central

Willoughby, Karen A.; Desrocher, Mary; Levine, Brian; Rovet, Joanne F.

2012-01-01

Few studies have examined both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory (AM) performance during late childhood and early adolescence. Using the newly developed Children’s Autobiographical Interview (CAI), the present study examined the effects of age and sex on episodic and semantic AM and everyday memory in 182 children and adolescents. Results indicated that episodic and semantic AM both improved between 8 and 16 years of age; however, age-related changes were larger for episodic AM than for semantic AM. In addition, females were found to recall more episodic AM details, but not more semantic AM details, than males. Importantly, this sex difference in episodic AM recall was attenuated under conditions of high retrieval support (i.e., the use of probing questions). The ability to clearly visualize past events at the time of recollection was related to children’s episodic AM recall performance, particularly the retrieval of perceptual details. Finally, similar age and sex effects were found between episodic AM and everyday memory ability (e.g., memory for everyday activities). More specifically, older participants and females exhibited better episodic AM and everyday memory performance than younger participants and males. Overall, the present study provides important new insight into both episodic and semantic AM performance, as well as the relation between episodic AM and everyday memory, during late childhood and adolescence. PMID:22403560

Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence.

PubMed

Willoughby, Karen A; Desrocher, Mary; Levine, Brian; Rovet, Joanne F

2012-01-01

Few studies have examined both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory (AM) performance during late childhood and early adolescence. Using the newly developed Children's Autobiographical Interview (CAI), the present study examined the effects of age and sex on episodic and semantic AM and everyday memory in 182 children and adolescents. Results indicated that episodic and semantic AM both improved between 8 and 16 years of age; however, age-related changes were larger for episodic AM than for semantic AM. In addition, females were found to recall more episodic AM details, but not more semantic AM details, than males. Importantly, this sex difference in episodic AM recall was attenuated under conditions of high retrieval support (i.e., the use of probing questions). The ability to clearly visualize past events at the time of recollection was related to children's episodic AM recall performance, particularly the retrieval of perceptual details. Finally, similar age and sex effects were found between episodic AM and everyday memory ability (e.g., memory for everyday activities). More specifically, older participants and females exhibited better episodic AM and everyday memory performance than younger participants and males. Overall, the present study provides important new insight into both episodic and semantic AM performance, as well as the relation between episodic AM and everyday memory, during late childhood and adolescence.

Personal semantic memory: insights from neuropsychological research on amnesia.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D; Verfaellie, Mieke

2014-08-01

This paper provides insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms of personal semantic memory, knowledge that is specific and unique to individuals, by reviewing neuropsychological research on stable amnesia secondary to medial temporal lobe damage. The results reveal that personal semantic memory does not depend on a unitary set of cognitive and neural mechanisms. Findings show that autobiographical fact knowledge reflects an experience-near type of personal semantic memory that relies on the medial temporal lobe for retrieval, albeit less so than personal episodic memory. Additional evidence demonstrates that new autobiographical fact learning likely relies on the medial temporal lobe, but the extent to which remains unclear. Other findings show that retrieval of personal traits/roles and new learning of personal traits/roles and thoughts/beliefs are independent of the medial temporal lobe and thus may represent highly conceptual types of personal semantic memory that are stored in the neocortex. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Memory for relations in the short term and the long term after medial temporal lobe damage.

PubMed

Squire, Larry R

2017-05-01

A central idea about the organization of declarative memory and the function of the hippocampus is that the hippocampus provides for the coding of relationships between items. A question arises whether this idea refers to the process of forming long-term memory or whether, as some studies have suggested, memory for relations might depend on the hippocampus even at short retention intervals and even when the task falls within the province of short-term (working) memory. The latter formulation appears to place the operation of relational memory into conflict with the idea that working memory is independent of medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures. In this report, the concepts of relational memory and working memory are discussed in the light of a simple demonstration experiment. Patients with MTL lesions successfully learned and recalled two word pairs when tested directly after learning but failed altogether when tested after a delay. The results do not contradict the idea that the hippocampus has a fundamental role in relational memory. However, there is a need for further elaboration and specification of the idea in order to explain why patients with MTL lesions can establish relational memory in the short term but not in long-term memory. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Does exercise habit strength moderate the relationship between emotional distress and short-term memory in Malaysian primary school children?

PubMed

Zainol, Nurul Ain; Hashim, Hairul Anuar

2015-01-01

We examined the moderating effects of exercise habit strength on the relationship between emotional distress and short-term memory in primary school children. The sample consisted of 165 primary school students (10-12 years old). Participants completed measures of emotional distress, exercise habit strength, and the Digit Span Test. Mid-year exam results were used as an indicator of academic performance. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. The results of SEM revealed an acceptable fit for the hypothesised model. Exercise habit was positively associated with short-term memory, and better short-term memory was associated with better academic performance. However, although an inverse relationship was found between emotional distress and short-term memory, a positive association was found between exercise habit strength and emotional distress. The findings indicate that exercise habit is positively associated with cognitive ability and mediates the negative effect of distress.

Transfer of Information from Short- to Long-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Modigliani, Vito; Seamon, John G.

1974-01-01

The present study examined current hypotheses concerning information transfer from short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM) using a Peterson STM task with word triplets presented over retention intervals of 0, 3, 6, 9, and 18 sec. (Editor)

Verbal short-term memory and vocabulary learning in polyglots.

PubMed

Papagno, C; Vallar, G

1995-02-01

Polyglot and non-polyglot Italian subjects were given tests assessing verbal (phonological) and visuo-spatial short-term and long-term memory, general intelligence, and vocabulary knowledge in their native language. Polyglots had a superior level of performance in verbal short-term memory tasks (auditory digit span and nonword repetition) and in a paired-associate learning test, which assessed the subjects' ability to acquire new (Russian) words. By contrast, the two groups had comparable performance levels in tasks assessing general intelligence, visuo-spatial short-term memory and learning, and paired-associate learning of Italian words. These findings, which are in line with neuropsychological and developmental evidence, as well as with data from normal subjects, suggest a close relationship between the capacity of phonological memory and the acquisition of foreign languages.

Long-term memory for verbal and visual information in Down syndrome and Williams syndrome: performance on the Doors and People test.

PubMed

Jarrold, Christopher; Baddeley, Alan D; Phillips, Caroline

2007-02-01

Previous studies have suggested that Williams syndrome and Down syndrome may be associated with specific short-term memory deficits. Individuals with Williams syndrome perform relatively poorly on tests of visuo-spatial short-term memory and individuals with Down syndrome show a relative deficit on verbal short-term memory tasks. However, these patterns of impairments may reflect the impact of generally impaired visuo-spatial processing skills in Williams syndrome, and verbal abilities in Down syndrome. The current study explored this possibility by assessing long-term memory among 15 individuals with Williams syndrome and 20 individuals with Down syndrome using the Doors and People test, a battery which assesses recall and recognition of verbal and visual information. Individuals' performance was standardised for age and level of intellectual ability with reference to that shown by a sample of 110 typically developing children. The results showed that individuals with Down syndrome have no differential deficits in long-term memory for verbal information, implying that verbal short-term memory deficits in this population are relatively selective. Instead both individuals with Down syndrome and with Williams syndrome showed some evidence of relatively poor performance on tests of long-term memory for visual information. It is therefore possible that visuo-spatial short-term memory deficits that have previously been demonstrated in Williams syndrome may be secondary to more general problems in visuo-spatial processing in this population.

Human ecstasy (MDMA) polydrug users have altered brain activation during semantic processing.

PubMed

Watkins, Tristan J; Raj, Vidya; Lee, Junghee; Dietrich, Mary S; Cao, Aize; Blackford, Jennifer U; Salomon, Ronald M; Park, Sohee; Benningfield, Margaret M; Di Iorio, Christina R; Cowan, Ronald L

2013-05-01

Ecstasy (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine [MDMA]) polydrug users have verbal memory performance that is statistically significantly lower than that of control subjects. Studies have correlated long-term MDMA use with altered brain activation in regions that play a role in verbal memory. The aim of our study was to examine the association of lifetime ecstasy use with semantic memory performance and brain activation in ecstasy polydrug users. A total of 23 abstinent ecstasy polydrug users (age = 24.57 years) and 11 controls (age = 22.36 years) performed a two-part functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) semantic encoding and recognition task. To isolate brain regions activated during each semantic task, we created statistical activation maps in which brain activation was greater for word stimuli than for non-word stimuli (corrected p < 0.05). During the encoding phase, ecstasy polydrug users had greater activation during semantic encoding bilaterally in language processing regions, including Brodmann areas 7, 39, and 40. Of this bilateral activation, signal intensity with a peak T in the right superior parietal lobe was correlated with lifetime ecstasy use (r s = 0.43, p = 0.042). Behavioral performance did not differ between groups. These findings demonstrate that ecstasy polydrug users have increased brain activation during semantic processing. This increase in brain activation in the absence of behavioral deficits suggests that ecstasy polydrug users have reduced cortical efficiency during semantic encoding, possibly secondary to MDMA-induced 5-HT neurotoxicity. Although pre-existing differences cannot be ruled out, this suggests the possibility of a compensatory mechanism allowing ecstasy polydrug users to perform equivalently to controls, providing additional support for an association of altered cerebral neurophysiology with MDMA exposure.

Human ecstasy (MDMA) polydrug users have altered brain activation during semantic processing

PubMed Central

Watkins, Tristan J.; Raj, Vidya; Lee, Junghee; Dietrich, Mary S.; Cao, Aize; Blackford, Jennifer U.; Salomon, Ronald M.; Park, Sohee; Benningfield, Margaret M.; Di Iorio, Christina R.; Cowan, Ronald L.

2012-01-01

Rationale Ecstasy (MDMA) polydrug users have verbal memory performance that is statistically significantly lower than comparison control subjects. Studies have correlated long-term MDMA use with altered brain activation in regions that play a role in verbal memory. Objectives The aim of our study was to examine the association of lifetime ecstasy use with semantic memory performance and brain activation in ecstasy polydrug users. Methods 23 abstinent ecstasy polydrug users (age=24.57) and 11 controls (age=22.36) performed a two-part fMRI semantic encoding and recognition task. To isolate brain regions activated during each semantic task, we created statistical activation maps in which brain activation was greater for word stimuli than for non-word stimuli (corrected p<0.05). Results During the encoding phase, ecstasy polydrug users had greater activation during semantic encoding bilaterally in language processing regions, including Brodmann Areas 7, 39, and 40. Of this bilateral activation, signal intensity with a peak T in the right superior parietal lobe was correlated with lifetime ecstasy use (rs=0.43, p=0.042). Behavioral performance did not differ between groups. Conclusions These findings demonstrate that ecstasy polydrug users have increased brain activation during semantic processing. This increase in brain activation in the absence of behavioral deficits suggests that ecstasy polydrug users have reduced cortical efficiency during semantic encoding, possibly secondary to MDMA-induced 5-HT neurotoxicity. Although pre-existing differences cannot be ruled out, this suggests the possibility of a compensatory mechanism allowing ecstasy polydrug users to perform equivalently to controls, providing additional support for an association of altered cerebral neurophysiology with MDMA exposure. PMID:23241648

Psychophysical studies of the performance of an image database retrieval system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papathomas, Thomas V.; Conway, Tiffany E.; Cox, Ingemar J.; Ghosn, Joumana; Miller, Matt L.; Minka, Thomas P.; Yianilos, Peter N.

1998-07-01

We describe psychophysical experiments conducted to study PicHunter, a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system. Experiment 1 studies the importance of using (a) semantic information, (2) memory of earlier input and (3) relative, rather than absolute, judgements of image similarity. The target testing paradigm is used in which a user must search for an image identical to a target. We find that the best performance comes from a version of PicHunter that uses only semantic cues, with memory and relative similarity judgements. Second best is use of both pictorial and semantic cues, with memory and relative similarity judgements. Most reports of CBIR systems provide only qualitative measures of performance based on how similar retrieved images are to a target. Experiment 2 puts PicHunter into this context with a more rigorous test. We first establish a baseline for our database by measuring the time required to find an image that is similar to a target when the images are presented in random order. Although PicHunter's performance is measurably better than this, the test is weak because even random presentation of images yields reasonably short search times. This casts doubt on the strength of results given in other reports where no baseline is established.

The impact of semantic impairment on word stem completion in Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Beauregard, M; Chertkow, H; Gold, D; Bergman, S

2001-01-01

Both the extent of semantic memory impairment and the level of processing attained during encoding might constitute critical factors in determining the amount of word-stem completion (WSC) priming encountered in Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects. We investigated the impact of varying encoding level in AD and elderly normal subjects, using a set of stimuli ranked as "intact" or "degraded" in terms of each subject's semantic knowledge on probe questions. For both shallow and deep encoding conditions, overall priming in the two subject groups was equivalent. However, for the deep encoding condition, consisting of a semantic judgment task performed on each target word, the priming effect noted in AD subjects was significantly smaller for semantically degraded items than for semantically intact items. Results indicate that the degree of semantic impairment represents one important variable affecting the amount of WSC priming which results when deep encoding procedures are used at study.

Semantic amnesia without dementia: documentation of a case.

PubMed

Rusconi, M L; Zago, S; Basso, A

1997-06-01

We described the case of a patient affected by a progressive semantic memory disorder associated with prevalent temporal lobe atrophy. This deficit seems to be "pure" in the sense that it has not been found to overlap with other cognitive deficits (intellectual, linguistic, perceptual, visuo-spatial etc.) for a long time. Furthermore, despite his impaired semantic knowledge, the autobiographical memory of the patient was largely intact. This case therefore represents a form of "semantic amnesia" without dementia, and supports the hypothesis that there is a partial distinction between "semantic" and "episodic" memory.

The storage and recall of auditory memory.

PubMed

Nebenzahl, I; Albeck, Y

1990-01-01

The architecture of the auditory memory is investigated. The auditory information is assumed to be represented by f-t patterns. With the help of a psycho-physical experiment it is demonstrated that the storage of these patterns is highly folded in the sense that a long signal is broken into many short stretches before being stored in the memory. Recognition takes place by correlating newly heard input in the short term memory to information previously stored in the long term memory. We show that this correlation is performed after the input is accumulated and held statically in the short term memory.

Pigeon visual short-term memory directly compared to primates.

PubMed

Wright, Anthony A; Elmore, L Caitlin

2016-02-01

Three pigeons were trained to remember arrays of 2-6 colored squares and detect which of two squares had changed color to test their visual short-term memory. Procedures (e.g., stimuli, displays, viewing times, delays) were similar to those used to test monkeys and humans. Following extensive training, pigeons performed slightly better than similarly trained monkeys, but both animal species were considerably less accurate than humans with the same array sizes (2, 4 and 6 items). Pigeons and monkeys showed calculated memory capacities of one item or less, whereas humans showed a memory capacity of 2.5 items. Despite the differences in calculated memory capacities, the pigeons' memory results, like those from monkeys and humans, were all well characterized by an inverse power-law function fit to d' values for the five display sizes. This characterization provides a simple, straightforward summary of the fundamental processing of visual short-term memory (how visual short-term memory declines with memory load) that emphasizes species similarities based upon similar functional relationships. By closely matching pigeon testing parameters to those of monkeys and humans, these similar functional relationships suggest similar underlying processes of visual short-term memory in pigeons, monkeys and humans. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Conversion of short-term to long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm

PubMed Central

Moore, Shannon J.; Deshpande, Kaivalya; Stinnett, Gwen S.; Seasholtz, Audrey F.; Murphy, Geoffrey G.

2013-01-01

It is well-known that stress can significantly impact learning; however, whether this effect facilitates or impairs the resultant memory depends on the characteristics of the stressor. Investigation of these dynamics can be confounded by the role of the stressor in motivating performance in a task. Positing a cohesive model of the effect of stress on learning and memory necessitates elucidating the consequences of stressful stimuli independently from task-specific functions. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of manipulating a task-independent stressor (elevated light level) on short-term and long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm. Short-term memory was elicited in both low light and high light conditions, but long-term memory specifically required high light conditions during the acquisition phase (familiarization trial) and was independent of the light level during retrieval (test trial). Additionally, long-term memory appeared to be independent of stress-mediated glucocorticoid release, as both low and high light produced similar levels of plasma corticosterone, which further did not correlate with subsequent memory performance. Finally, both short-term and long-term memory showed no savings between repeated experiments suggesting that this novel object recognition paradigm may be useful for longitudinal studies, particularly when investigating treatments to stabilize or enhance weak memories in neurodegenerative diseases or during age-related cognitive decline. PMID:23835143

Conversion of short-term to long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm.

PubMed

Moore, Shannon J; Deshpande, Kaivalya; Stinnett, Gwen S; Seasholtz, Audrey F; Murphy, Geoffrey G

2013-10-01

It is well-known that stress can significantly impact learning; however, whether this effect facilitates or impairs the resultant memory depends on the characteristics of the stressor. Investigation of these dynamics can be confounded by the role of the stressor in motivating performance in a task. Positing a cohesive model of the effect of stress on learning and memory necessitates elucidating the consequences of stressful stimuli independently from task-specific functions. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of manipulating a task-independent stressor (elevated light level) on short-term and long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm. Short-term memory was elicited in both low light and high light conditions, but long-term memory specifically required high light conditions during the acquisition phase (familiarization trial) and was independent of the light level during retrieval (test trial). Additionally, long-term memory appeared to be independent of stress-mediated glucocorticoid release, as both low and high light produced similar levels of plasma corticosterone, which further did not correlate with subsequent memory performance. Finally, both short-term and long-term memory showed no savings between repeated experiments suggesting that this novel object recognition paradigm may be useful for longitudinal studies, particularly when investigating treatments to stabilize or enhance weak memories in neurodegenerative diseases or during age-related cognitive decline. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Getting connected: Both associative and semantic links structure semantic memory for newly learned persons.

PubMed

Wiese, Holger; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2015-01-01

The present study examined whether semantic memory for newly learned people is structured by visual co-occurrence, shared semantics, or both. Participants were trained with pairs of simultaneously presented (i.e., co-occurring) preexperimentally unfamiliar faces, which either did or did not share additionally provided semantic information (occupation, place of living, etc.). Semantic information could also be shared between faces that did not co-occur. A subsequent priming experiment revealed faster responses for both co-occurrence/no shared semantics and no co-occurrence/shared semantics conditions, than for an unrelated condition. Strikingly, priming was strongest in the co-occurrence/shared semantics condition, suggesting additive effects of these factors. Additional analysis of event-related brain potentials yielded priming in the N400 component only for combined effects of visual co-occurrence and shared semantics, with more positive amplitudes in this than in the unrelated condition. Overall, these findings suggest that both semantic relatedness and visual co-occurrence are important when novel information is integrated into person-related semantic memory.

Working Memory and Short-Term Memory Abilities in Accomplished Multilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biedron, Adriana; Szczepaniak, Anna

2012-01-01

The role of short-term memory and working memory in accomplished multilinguals was investigated. Twenty-eight accomplished multilinguals were compared to 36 mainstream philology students. The following instruments were used in the study: three memory subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale (Digit Span, Digit-Symbol Coding, and Arithmetic,…

Overlap in the functional neural systems involved in semantic and episodic memory retrieval.

PubMed

Rajah, M N; McIntosh, A R

2005-03-01

Neuroimaging and neuropsychological data suggest that episodic and semantic memory may be mediated by distinct neural systems. However, an alternative perspective is that episodic and semantic memory represent different modes of processing within a single declarative memory system. To examine whether the multiple or the unitary system view better represents the data we conducted a network analysis using multivariate partial least squares (PLS ) activation analysis followed by covariance structural equation modeling (SEM) of positron emission tomography data obtained while healthy adults performed episodic and semantic verbal retrieval tasks. It is argued that if performance of episodic and semantic retrieval tasks are mediated by different memory systems, then there should differences in both regional activations and interregional correlations related to each type of retrieval task, respectively. The PLS results identified brain regions that were differentially active during episodic retrieval versus semantic retrieval. Regions that showed maximal differences in regional activity between episodic retrieval tasks were used to construct separate functional models for episodic and semantic retrieval. Omnibus tests of these functional models failed to find a significant difference across tasks for both functional models. The pattern of path coefficients for the episodic retrieval model were not different across tasks, nor were the path coefficients for the semantic retrieval model. The SEM results suggest that the same memory network/system was engaged across tasks, given the similarities in path coefficients. Therefore, activation differences between episodic and semantic retrieval may ref lect variation along a continuum of processing during task performance within the context of a single memory system.

Temporal Prediction Errors Affect Short-Term Memory Scanning Response Time.

PubMed

Limongi, Roberto; Silva, Angélica M

2016-11-01

The Sternberg short-term memory scanning task has been used to unveil cognitive operations involved in time perception. Participants produce time intervals during the task, and the researcher explores how task performance affects interval production - where time estimation error is the dependent variable of interest. The perspective of predictive behavior regards time estimation error as a temporal prediction error (PE), an independent variable that controls cognition, behavior, and learning. Based on this perspective, we investigated whether temporal PEs affect short-term memory scanning. Participants performed temporal predictions while they maintained information in memory. Model inference revealed that PEs affected memory scanning response time independently of the memory-set size effect. We discuss the results within the context of formal and mechanistic models of short-term memory scanning and predictive coding, a Bayes-based theory of brain function. We state the hypothesis that our finding could be associated with weak frontostriatal connections and weak striatal activity.

The lasting memory enhancements of retrospective attention.

PubMed

Reaves, Sarah; Strunk, Jonathan; Phillips, Shekinah; Verhaeghen, Paul; Duarte, Audrey

2016-07-01

Behavioral research has shown that spatial cues that orient attention toward task relevant items being maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) enhance item memory accuracy. However, it is unknown if these retrospective attentional cues ("retro-cues") enhance memory beyond typical short-term memory delays. It is also unknown whether retro-cues affect the spatial information associated with VSTM representations. Emerging evidence suggests that processes that affect short-term memory maintenance may also affect long-term memory (LTM) but little work has investigated the role of attention in LTM. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we investigated the duration of retrospective attention effects and the impact of retrospective attention manipulations on VSTM representations. Results revealed that retro-cueing improved both VSTM and LTM memory accuracy and that posterior maximal ERPs observed during VSTM maintenance predicted subsequent LTM performance. N2pc ERPs associated with attentional selection were attenuated by retro-cueing suggesting that retrospective attention may disrupt maintenance of spatial configural information in VSTM. Collectively, these findings suggest that retrospective attention can alter the structure of memory representations, which impacts memory performance beyond short-term memory delays. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Speech Perception and Short Term Memory Deficits in Persistent Developmental Speech Disorder

PubMed Central

Kenney, Mary Kay; Barac-Cikoja, Dragana; Finnegan, Kimberly; Jeffries, Neal; Ludlow, Christy L.

2008-01-01

Children with developmental speech disorders may have additional deficits in speech perception and/or short-term memory. To determine whether these are only transient developmental delays that can accompany the disorder in childhood or persist as part of the speech disorder, adults with a persistent familial speech disorder were tested on speech perception and short-term memory. Nine adults with a persistent familial developmental speech disorder without language impairment were compared with 20 controls on tasks requiring the discrimination of fine acoustic cues for word identification and on measures of verbal and nonverbal short-term memory. Significant group differences were found in the slopes of the discrimination curves for first formant transitions for word identification with stop gaps of 40 and 20 ms with effect sizes of 1.60 and 1.56. Significant group differences also occurred on tests of nonverbal rhythm and tonal memory, and verbal short-term memory with effect sizes of 2.38, 1.56 and 1.73. No group differences occurred in the use of stop gap durations for word identification. Because frequency-based speech perception and short-term verbal and nonverbal memory deficits both persisted into adulthood in the speech-impaired adults, these deficits may be involved in the persistence of speech disorders without language impairment. PMID:15896836

Holding multiple items in short term memory: a neural mechanism.

PubMed

Rolls, Edmund T; Dempere-Marco, Laura; Deco, Gustavo

2013-01-01

Human short term memory has a capacity of several items maintained simultaneously. We show how the number of short term memory representations that an attractor network modeling a cortical local network can simultaneously maintain active is increased by using synaptic facilitation of the type found in the prefrontal cortex. We have been able to maintain 9 short term memories active simultaneously in integrate-and-fire simulations where the proportion of neurons in each population, the sparseness, is 0.1, and have confirmed the stability of such a system with mean field analyses. Without synaptic facilitation the system can maintain many fewer memories active in the same network. The system operates because of the effectively increased synaptic strengths formed by the synaptic facilitation just for those pools to which the cue is applied, and then maintenance of this synaptic facilitation in just those pools when the cue is removed by the continuing neuronal firing in those pools. The findings have implications for understanding how several items can be maintained simultaneously in short term memory, how this may be relevant to the implementation of language in the brain, and suggest new approaches to understanding and treating the decline in short term memory that can occur with normal aging.

Holding Multiple Items in Short Term Memory: A Neural Mechanism

PubMed Central

Rolls, Edmund T.; Dempere-Marco, Laura; Deco, Gustavo

2013-01-01

Human short term memory has a capacity of several items maintained simultaneously. We show how the number of short term memory representations that an attractor network modeling a cortical local network can simultaneously maintain active is increased by using synaptic facilitation of the type found in the prefrontal cortex. We have been able to maintain 9 short term memories active simultaneously in integrate-and-fire simulations where the proportion of neurons in each population, the sparseness, is 0.1, and have confirmed the stability of such a system with mean field analyses. Without synaptic facilitation the system can maintain many fewer memories active in the same network. The system operates because of the effectively increased synaptic strengths formed by the synaptic facilitation just for those pools to which the cue is applied, and then maintenance of this synaptic facilitation in just those pools when the cue is removed by the continuing neuronal firing in those pools. The findings have implications for understanding how several items can be maintained simultaneously in short term memory, how this may be relevant to the implementation of language in the brain, and suggest new approaches to understanding and treating the decline in short term memory that can occur with normal aging. PMID:23613789

Insights from child development on the relationship between episodic and semantic memory.

PubMed

Robertson, Erin K; Köhler, Stefan

2007-11-05

The present study was motivated by a recent controversy in the neuropsychological literature on semantic dementia as to whether episodic encoding requires semantic processing or whether it can proceed solely based on perceptual processing. We addressed this issue by examining the effect of age-related limitations in semantic competency on episodic memory in 4-6-year-old children (n=67). We administered three different forced-choice recognition memory tests for pictures previously encountered in a single study episode. The tests varied in the degree to which access to semantically encoded information was required at retrieval. Semantic competency predicted recognition performance regardless of whether access to semantic information was required. A direct relation between picture naming at encoding and subsequent recognition was also found for all tests. Our findings emphasize the importance of semantic encoding processes even in retrieval situations that purportedly do not require access to semantic information. They also highlight the importance of testing neuropsychological models of memory in different populations, healthy and brain damaged, at both ends of the developmental continuum.

Semantic Processing Impairment in Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

PubMed Central

Jaimes-Bautista, Amanda G.; Rodríguez-Camacho, Mario; Martínez-Juárez, Iris E.; Rodríguez-Agudelo, Yaneth

2015-01-01

The impairment in episodic memory system is the best-known cognitive deficit in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Recent studies have shown evidence of semantic disorders, but they have been less studied than episodic memory. The semantic dysfunction in TLE has various cognitive manifestations, such as the presence of language disorders characterized by defects in naming, verbal fluency, or remote semantic information retrieval, which affects the ability of patients to interact with their surroundings. This paper is a review of recent research about the consequences of TLE on semantic processing, considering neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging findings, as well as the functional role of the hippocampus in semantic processing. The evidence from these studies shows disturbance of semantic memory in patients with TLE and supports the theory of declarative memory of the hippocampus. Functional neuroimaging studies show an inefficient compensatory functional reorganization of semantic networks and electrophysiological studies show a lack of N400 effect that could indicate that the deficit in semantic processing in patients with TLE could be due to a failure in the mechanisms of automatic access to lexicon. PMID:26257956

Modulation of alpha oscillations is required for the suppression of semantic interference.

PubMed

Melnik, Natalia; Mapelli, Igor; Özkurt, Tolga Esat

2017-10-01

Recent findings on alpha band oscillations suggest their important role in memory consolidation and suppression of external distractors such as environmental noise. However, less attention was given to the phenomenon of internal distracting information being solely inherent to the stimuli content. Human memory may be prone to internal distractions caused by semantic relatedness between the meaning of words (e.g., atom, neutron, nucleus, etc.) to be encoded, i.e., semantic interference. Our study investigates the brain oscillatory dynamics behind the semantic interference phenomenon, whose possible outcome is known as false memories. In this direction, Deese-Roediger-McDermott word lists were appropriated for a modified Sternberg paradigm in auditory modality. Participants received semantically related and unrelated word lists via headphones while EEG data were acquired. Semantic interference triggered the false memory rates to be higher than those of other types of memory errors. Analysis demonstrated that the upper part of alpha band (∼10-12Hz) power decreases on parieto-occipital channels in the retention interval, prior to the probe item for semantically related condition. Our study elucidates the oscillatory mechanisms behind semantic interference by relying on alpha functional inhibition theory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ordered Short-Term Memory Differs in Signers and Speakers: Implications for Models of Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

Phonological Short-Term and Working Memory in Bilinguals' Native and Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Yoo, Jeewon

2013-01-01

The goal of the current study was to examine bilinguals' phonological short-term and working memory performance in their native/first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Korean-English bilinguals were tested in both Korean (L1) and English (L2). Short-term memory (STM) was measured via a nonword repetition task, where participants repeated…

One declarative memory system or two? The relationship between episodic and semantic memory in children with temporal lobe epilepsy.

PubMed

Smith, Mary Lou; Lah, Suncica

2011-09-01

This study explored verbal semantic and episodic memory in children with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy to determine whether they had impairments in both or only 1 aspect of memory, and to examine relations between performance in the 2 domains. Sixty-six children and adolescents (37 with seizures of left temporal lobe onset, 29 with right-sided onset) were given 4 tasks assessing different aspects of semantic memory (picture naming, fluency, knowledge of facts, knowledge of word meanings) and 2 episodic memory tasks (story recall, word list recall). High rates of impairments were observed across tasks, and no differences were found related to the laterality of the seizures. Individual patient analyses showed that there was a double dissociation between the 2 aspects of memory in that some children were impaired on episodic but not semantic memory, whereas others showed intact episodic but impaired semantic memory. This double dissociation suggests that these 2 memory systems may develop independently in the context of temporal lobe pathology, perhaps related to differential effects of dysfunction in the lateral and mesial temporal lobe structures. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Goal-directed mechanisms that constrain retrieval predict subsequent memory for new "foil" information.

PubMed

Vogelsang, David A; Bonnici, Heidi M; Bergström, Zara M; Ranganath, Charan; Simons, Jon S

2016-08-01

To remember a previous event, it is often helpful to use goal-directed control processes to constrain what comes to mind during retrieval. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that incidental learning of new "foil" words in a recognition test is superior if the participant is trying to remember studied items that were semantically encoded compared to items that were non-semantically encoded. Here, we applied subsequent memory analysis to fMRI data to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the "foil effect". Participants encoded information during deep semantic and shallow non-semantic tasks and were tested in a subsequent blocked memory task to examine how orienting retrieval towards different types of information influences the incidental encoding of new words presented as foils during the memory test phase. To assess memory for foils, participants performed a further surprise old/new recognition test involving foil words that were encountered during the previous memory test blocks as well as completely new words. Subsequent memory effects, distinguishing successful versus unsuccessful incidental encoding of foils, were observed in regions that included the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal cortex. The left inferior frontal gyrus exhibited disproportionately larger subsequent memory effects for semantic than non-semantic foils, and significant overlap in activity during semantic, but not non-semantic, initial encoding and foil encoding. The results suggest that orienting retrieval towards different types of foils involves re-implementing the neurocognitive processes that were involved during initial encoding. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Transient global amnesia: implicit/explicit memory dissociation and PET assessment of brain perfusion and oxygen metabolism in the acute stage.

PubMed

Eustache, F; Desgranges, B; Petit-Taboué, M C; de la Sayette, V; Piot, V; Sablé, C; Marchal, G; Baron, J C

1997-09-01

To assess explicit memory and two components of implicit memory--that is, perceptual-verbal skill learning and lexical-semantic priming effects--as well as resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) and oxygen metabolism (CMRO2) during the acute phase of transient global amnesia. In a 59 year old woman, whose amnestic episode fulfilled all current criteria for transient global amnesia, a neuropsychological protocol was administered, including word learning, story recall, categorical fluency, mirror reading, and word stem completion tasks. PET was performed using the (15)O steady state inhalation method, while the patient still exhibited severe anterograde amnesia and was interleaved with the cognitive tests. There was a clear cut dissociation between impaired long term episodic memory and preserved implicit memory for its two components. Categorical fluency was significantly altered, suggesting word retrieval strategy--rather than semantic memory--impairment. The PET study disclosed a reduced CMRO2 with relatively or fully preserved CBF in the left prefrontotemporal cortex and lentiform nucleus, and the reverse pattern over the left occipital cortex. The PET alterations with patchy CBF-CMRO2 uncoupling would be compatible with a migraine-like phenomenon and indicate that the isolated assessment of perfusion in transient global amnesia may be misleading. The pattern of metabolic depression, with sparing of the hippocampal area, is one among the distinct patterns of brain dysfunction that underlie the (apparently) uniform clinical presentation of transient global amnesia. The finding of a left prefrontal hypometabolism in the face of impaired episodic memory and altered verbal fluency would fit present day concepts from PET activation studies about the role of this area in episodic and semantic memory encoding/retrieval. Likewise, the changes affecting the lenticular nucleus but sparing the caudate would be consistent with the normal performance in perceptual-verbal skill learning. Finally, unaltered lexical-semantic priming effects, despite left temporal cortex hypometabolism, suggest that these processes are subserved by a more distributed neocortical network.

Impact of Spatial and Verbal Short-Term Memory Load on Auditory Spatial Attention Gradients.

PubMed

Golob, Edward J; Winston, Jenna; Mock, Jeffrey R

2017-01-01

Short-term memory load can impair attentional control, but prior work shows that the extent of the effect ranges from being very general to very specific. One factor for the mixed results may be reliance on point estimates of memory load effects on attention. Here we used auditory attention gradients as an analog measure to map-out the impact of short-term memory load over space. Verbal or spatial information was maintained during an auditory spatial attention task and compared to no-load. Stimuli were presented from five virtual locations in the frontal azimuth plane, and subjects focused on the midline. Reaction times progressively increased for lateral stimuli, indicating an attention gradient. Spatial load further slowed responses at lateral locations, particularly in the left hemispace, but had little effect at midline. Verbal memory load had no (Experiment 1), or a minimal (Experiment 2) influence on reaction times. Spatial and verbal load increased switch costs between memory encoding and attention tasks relative to the no load condition. The findings show that short-term memory influences the distribution of auditory attention over space; and that the specific pattern depends on the type of information in short-term memory.

Impact of Spatial and Verbal Short-Term Memory Load on Auditory Spatial Attention Gradients

PubMed Central

Golob, Edward J.; Winston, Jenna; Mock, Jeffrey R.

2017-01-01

Short-term memory load can impair attentional control, but prior work shows that the extent of the effect ranges from being very general to very specific. One factor for the mixed results may be reliance on point estimates of memory load effects on attention. Here we used auditory attention gradients as an analog measure to map-out the impact of short-term memory load over space. Verbal or spatial information was maintained during an auditory spatial attention task and compared to no-load. Stimuli were presented from five virtual locations in the frontal azimuth plane, and subjects focused on the midline. Reaction times progressively increased for lateral stimuli, indicating an attention gradient. Spatial load further slowed responses at lateral locations, particularly in the left hemispace, but had little effect at midline. Verbal memory load had no (Experiment 1), or a minimal (Experiment 2) influence on reaction times. Spatial and verbal load increased switch costs between memory encoding and attention tasks relative to the no load condition. The findings show that short-term memory influences the distribution of auditory attention over space; and that the specific pattern depends on the type of information in short-term memory. PMID:29218024

Altered strategy in short-term memory for pictures in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a near-infrared spectroscopy study.

PubMed

Sanefuji, Masafumi; Yamashita, Hiroshi; Torisu, Hiroyuki; Takada, Yui; Imanaga, Hisako; Matsunaga, Mayumi; Ishizaki, Yoshito; Sakai, Yasunari; Yoshida, Keiko; Hara, Toshiro

2014-07-30

Strategy in short-term memory for serially presented pictures shifts gradually from a non-phonological to a phonological method as memory ability increases during typical childhood development. However, little is known about the development of this strategic change in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To understand the neural basis of ADHD, we investigated short-term memory strategies using near-infrared spectroscopy. ADHD children aged from 6 to 12 years and age- and sex-matched control children were assessed in this study. Regional activity was monitored in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex to assess strategies used during short-term memory for visual or phonological objects. We examined the hypothesis that the strategic methods used would be correlated with memory ability. Higher memory ability and the phonological strategy were significantly correlated in the control group but not in the ADHD group. Intriguingly, ADHD children receiving methylphenidate treatment exhibited increased use of phonological strategy compared with those without. In conclusion, we found evidence of an altered strategy in short-term memory in ADHD children. The modulatory effect of methylphenidate indicates its therapeutic efficacy. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interactions between mood and the structure of semantic memory: event-related potentials evidence

PubMed Central

Pinheiro, Ana P.; del Re, Elisabetta; Nestor, Paul G; McCarley, Robert W.; Gonçalves, Óscar F.

2013-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that affect acts as modulator of cognitive processes and in particular that induced mood has an effect on the way semantic memory is used on-line. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine affective modulation of semantic information processing under three different moods: neutral, positive and negative. Fifteen subjects read 324 pairs of sentences, after mood induction procedure with 30 pictures of neutral, 30 pictures of positive and 30 pictures of neutral valence: 108 sentences were read in each mood induction condition. Sentences ended with three word types: expected words, within-category violations, and between-category violations. N400 amplitude was measured to the three word types under each mood induction condition. Under neutral mood, a congruency (more negative N400 amplitude for unexpected relative to expected endings) and a category effect (more negative N400 amplitude for between- than to within-category violations) were observed. Also, results showed differences in N400 amplitude for both within- and between-category violations as a function of mood: while positive mood tended to facilitate the integration of unexpected but related items, negative mood made their integration as difficult as unexpected and unrelated items. These findings suggest the differential impact of mood on access to long-term semantic memory during sentence comprehension. PMID:22434931

Interactions between mood and the structure of semantic memory: event-related potentials evidence.

PubMed

Pinheiro, Ana P; del Re, Elisabetta; Nestor, Paul G; McCarley, Robert W; Gonçalves, Óscar F; Niznikiewicz, Margaret

2013-06-01

Recent evidence suggests that affect acts as modulator of cognitive processes and in particular that induced mood has an effect on the way semantic memory is used on-line. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine affective modulation of semantic information processing under three different moods: neutral, positive and negative. Fifteen subjects read 324 pairs of sentences, after mood induction procedure with 30 pictures of neutral, 30 pictures of positive and 30 pictures of neutral valence: 108 sentences were read in each mood induction condition. Sentences ended with three word types: expected words, within-category violations, and between-category violations. N400 amplitude was measured to the three word types under each mood induction condition. Under neutral mood, a congruency (more negative N400 amplitude for unexpected relative to expected endings) and a category effect (more negative N400 amplitude for between- than to within-category violations) were observed. Also, results showed differences in N400 amplitude for both within- and between-category violations as a function of mood: while positive mood tended to facilitate the integration of unexpected but related items, negative mood made their integration as difficult as unexpected and unrelated items. These findings suggest the differential impact of mood on access to long-term semantic memory during sentence comprehension.

Usage of semantic representations in recognition memory.

PubMed

Nishiyama, Ryoji; Hirano, Tetsuji; Ukita, Jun

2017-11-01

Meanings of words facilitate false acceptance as well as correct rejection of lures in recognition memory tests, depending on the experimental context. This suggests that semantic representations are both directly and indirectly (i.e., mediated by perceptual representations) used in remembering. Studies using memory conjunction errors (MCEs) paradigms, in which the lures consist of component parts of studied words, have reported semantic facilitation of rejection of the lures. However, attending to components of the lures could potentially cause this. Therefore, we investigated whether semantic overlap of lures facilitates MCEs using Japanese Kanji words in which a whole-word image is more concerned in reading. Experiments demonstrated semantic facilitation of MCEs in a delayed recognition test (Experiment 1), and in immediate recognition tests in which participants were prevented from using phonological or orthographic representations (Experiment 2), and the salient effect on individuals with high semantic memory capacities (Experiment 3). Additionally, analysis of the receiver operating characteristic suggested that this effect is attributed to familiarity-based memory judgement and phantom recollection. These findings indicate that semantic representations can be directly used in remembering, even when perceptual representations of studied words are available.

Attentional capture by taboo words: A functional view of auditory distraction.

PubMed

Röer, Jan P; Körner, Ulrike; Buchner, Axel; Bell, Raoul

2017-06-01

It is well established that task-irrelevant, to-be-ignored speech adversely affects serial short-term memory (STM) for visually presented items compared with a quiet control condition. However, there is an ongoing debate about whether the semantic content of the speech has the capacity to capture attention and to disrupt memory performance. In the present article, we tested whether taboo words are more difficult to ignore than neutral words. Taboo words or neutral words were presented as (a) steady state sequences in which the same distractor word was repeated, (b) changing state sequences in which different distractor words were presented, and (c) auditory deviant sequences in which a single distractor word deviated from a sequence of repeated words. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that taboo words disrupted performance more than neutral words. This taboo effect did not habituate and it did not differ between individuals with high and low working memory capacity. In Experiments 3 and 4, in which only a single deviant taboo word was presented, no taboo effect was obtained. These results do not support the idea that the processing of the auditory distractors' semantic content is the result of occasional attention switches to the auditory modality. Instead, the overall pattern of results is more in line with a functional view of auditory distraction, according to which the to-be-ignored modality is routinely monitored for potentially important stimuli (e.g., self-relevant or threatening information), the detection of which draws processing resources away from the primary task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Tc1 mouse model of trisomy-21 dissociates properties of short- and long-term recognition memory.

PubMed

Hall, Jessica H; Wiseman, Frances K; Fisher, Elizabeth M C; Tybulewicz, Victor L J; Harwood, John L; Good, Mark A

2016-04-01

The present study examined memory function in Tc1 mice, a transchromosomic model of Down syndrome (DS). Tc1 mice demonstrated an unusual delay-dependent deficit in recognition memory. More specifically, Tc1 mice showed intact immediate (30sec), impaired short-term (10-min) and intact long-term (24-h) memory for objects. A similar pattern was observed for olfactory stimuli, confirming the generality of the pattern across sensory modalities. The specificity of the behavioural deficits in Tc1 mice was confirmed using APP overexpressing mice that showed the opposite pattern of object memory deficits. In contrast to object memory, Tc1 mice showed no deficit in either immediate or long-term memory for object-in-place information. Similarly, Tc1 mice showed no deficit in short-term memory for object-location information. The latter result indicates that Tc1 mice were able to detect and react to spatial novelty at the same delay interval that was sensitive to an object novelty recognition impairment. These results demonstrate (1) that novelty detection per se and (2) the encoding of visuo-spatial information was not disrupted in adult Tc1 mice. The authors conclude that the task specific nature of the short-term recognition memory deficit suggests that the trisomy of genes on human chromosome 21 in Tc1 mice impacts on (perirhinal) cortical systems supporting short-term object and olfactory recognition memory. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Episodic and Semantic Memory Influences on Picture Naming in Alzheimer's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Small, Jeff A.; Sandhu, Nirmaljeet

2008-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between semantic and episodic memory as they support lexical access by healthy younger and older adults and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In particular, we were interested in examining the pattern of semantic and episodic memory declines in AD (i.e., word-finding difficulty and impaired recent…

Picture Superiority in Free Recall: The Effects of Organization and Elaboration.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ritchey, Gary H.

1980-01-01

Tests the notion that activation in children's semantic memory might best be considered in terms of both between-item and within-item elaboration. Subjects were 192 second, fourth, and sixth graders. (MP)

How emotional pictures influence visuospatial binding in short-term memory in ageing and Alzheimer's disease?

PubMed

Borg, Céline; Leroy, Nicolas; Favre, Emilie; Laurent, Bernard; Thomas-Antérion, Catherine

2011-06-01

The present study examines the prediction that emotion can facilitate short-term memory. Nevertheless, emotion also recruits attention to process information, thereby disrupting short-term memory when tasks involve high attentional resources. In this way, we aimed to determine whether there is a differential influence of emotional information on short-term memory in ageing and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Fourteen patients with mild AD, 14 healthy older participants (NC), and 14 younger adults (YA) performed two tasks. In the first task, involving visual short-term memory, participants were asked to remember a picture among four different pictures (negative or neutral) following a brief delay. The second task, a binding memory task, required the recognition by participants of a picture according to its spatial location. The attentional cost involved was higher than for the first task. The pattern of results showed that visual memory performance was better for negative stimuli than for neutral ones, irrespective of the group. In contrast, binding memory performance was essentially poorer for the location of negative pictures in the NC group, and for the location of both negative and neutral stimuli in the AD group, in comparison to the YA group. Taken together, these results show that emotion has beneficial effects on visual short-term memory in ageing and AD. In contrast, emotion does not improve their performances in the binding condition. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Short-term memory, executive control, and children's route learning.

PubMed

Purser, Harry R M; Farran, Emily K; Courbois, Yannick; Lemahieu, Axelle; Mellier, Daniel; Sockeel, Pascal; Blades, Mark

2012-10-01

The aim of this study was to investigate route-learning ability in 67 children aged 5 to 11years and to relate route-learning performance to the components of Baddeley's model of working memory. Children carried out tasks that included measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory and executive control and also measures of verbal and visuospatial long-term memory; the route-learning task was conducted using a maze in a virtual environment. In contrast to previous research, correlations were found between both visuospatial and verbal memory tasks-the Corsi task, short-term pattern span, digit span, and visuospatial long-term memory-and route-learning performance. However, further analyses indicated that these relationships were mediated by executive control demands that were common to the tasks, with long-term memory explaining additional unique variance in route learning. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The human hippocampal formation mediates short-term memory of colour-location associations.

PubMed

Finke, Carsten; Braun, Mischa; Ostendorf, Florian; Lehmann, Thomas-Nicolas; Hoffmann, Karl-Titus; Kopp, Ute; Ploner, Christoph J

2008-01-31

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) has long been considered essential for declarative long-term memory, whereas the fronto-parietal cortex is generally seen as the anatomical substrate of short-term memory. This traditional dichotomy is questioned by recent studies suggesting a possible role of the MTL for short-term memory. In addition, there is no consensus on a possible specialization of MTL sub-regions for memory of associative information. Here, we investigated short-term memory for single features and feature associations in three humans with post-surgical lesions affecting the right hippocampal formation and in 10 healthy controls. We used three delayed-match-to-sample tasks with two delays (900/5000 ms) and three set sizes (2/4/6 items). Subjects were instructed to remember either colours, locations or colour-location associations. In colour-only and location-only conditions, performance of patients did not differ from controls. By contrast, a significant group difference was found in the association condition at 5000 ms delay. This difference was largely independent of set size, thus suggesting that it cannot be explained by the increased complexity of the association condition. These findings show that the hippocampal formation plays a significant role for short-term memory of simple visuo-spatial associations, and suggest a specialization of MTL sub-regions for associative memory.

Audiovisual semantic congruency during encoding enhances memory performance.

PubMed

Heikkilä, Jenni; Alho, Kimmo; Hyvönen, Heidi; Tiippana, Kaisa

2015-01-01

Studies of memory and learning have usually focused on a single sensory modality, although human perception is multisensory in nature. In the present study, we investigated the effects of audiovisual encoding on later unisensory recognition memory performance. The participants were to memorize auditory or visual stimuli (sounds, pictures, spoken words, or written words), each of which co-occurred with either a semantically congruent stimulus, incongruent stimulus, or a neutral (non-semantic noise) stimulus in the other modality during encoding. Subsequent memory performance was overall better when the stimulus to be memorized was initially accompanied by a semantically congruent stimulus in the other modality than when it was accompanied by a neutral stimulus. These results suggest that semantically congruent multisensory experiences enhance encoding of both nonverbal and verbal materials, resulting in an improvement in their later recognition memory.

Neuropsychological assessment of memory in child and adolescent first episode psychosis: cannabis and «the paradox effect».

PubMed

Moreno-Granados, Josefa María; Ferrín, Maite; Salcedo-Marín, Dolores M; Ruiz-Veguilla, Miguel

2014-01-01

The importance of neuropsychological functioning in First-Episode Psychosis (FEP) has led to the publication of a growing number of studies in this area of research. The present study pursued three goals: First, to examine verbal and visual memory in a sample of Child and Adolescent FEP, second, to evaluate the effect of other cognitive domains on verbal and visual memory, and finally, to examine the relationship between performance in this cognitive dimension and the use of cannabis at this age. A sample of 41 FEPs and 39 healthy subjects were evaluated. The variables assessed were verbal and visual memory, attention, working memory, processing speed, mental flexibility, verbal fluency, motor coordination, planning ability and intelligence. Our results found impairment of short and long-term recall of verbal memory, and short-term visual memory in early psychosis. They also found relationships between cognitive dimensions, such as visual memory and intelligence and motor coordination. Finally, a «paradoxical» effect was found in patients who used cannabis, as the FEP consumers performed the visual memory test better than those who had not used it. Patients showed impairment of short and long-term recall of verbal information and short-term visual reproduction. In the second place, motor coordination and intelligence influenced short-term visual memory in patients in the early stages of the illness. Third, use of cannabis in patients with FEP was associated with better performance in the test that evaluated the short-term visual memory, as measured by task completion time, that is, efficiency in performing the test. However, when measured by task execution accuracy, their visual memory was no better than the controls. Copyright © 2012 SEP y SEPB. Published by Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

Unaware Memory in Hypothesis Generation Tasks

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-12-01

have been offered within the context of Tulving’s (1972) distinction between episodic and semantic memory systems (e.g., see Jacoby & - Witherspoon...in this direction (see Tulving, 1985) raise the possibility that neither episodic nor semantic memory systems can account for the type of unaware...material: Interactions with " episodic " and " semantic " memory . Conitive Psycholozv, 12, 227-251. Kolers, P. A. (1976). Reading a year later. Journal o

Graph-Theoretic Properties of Networks Based on Word Association Norms: Implications for Models of Lexical Semantic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gruenenfelder, Thomas M.; Recchia, Gabriel; Rubin, Tim; Jones, Michael N.

2016-01-01

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory (BEAGLE, Latent Semantic Analysis, and the Topic model) and of a simple associative model (POC) to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network…

Remote semantic memory is impoverished in hippocampal amnesia

PubMed Central

Klooster, Nathaniel B.; Duff, Melissa C.

2015-01-01

The necessity of the hippocampus for acquiring new semantic concepts is a topic of considerable debate. However, it is generally accepted that any role the hippocampus plays in semantic memory is time limited and that previously acquired information becomes independent of the hippocampus over time. This view, along with intact naming and word-definition matching performance in amnesia, has led to the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Motivated by perspectives of word learning as a protracted process where additional features and senses of a word are added over time, and by recent discoveries about the time course of hippocampal contributions to on-line relational processing, reconsolidation, and the flexible integration of information, we revisit the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in amnesia. Using measures of semantic richness and vocabulary depth from psycholinguistics and first and second language-learning studies, we examined how much information is associated with previously acquired, highly familiar words in a group of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and amnesia. Relative to healthy demographically matched comparison participants and a group of brain-damaged comparison participants, the patients with hippocampal amnesia performed significantly worse on both productive and receptive measures of vocabulary depth and semantic richness. These findings suggest that remote semantic memory is impoverished in patients with hippocampal amnesia and that the hippocampus may play a role in the maintenance and updating of semantic memory beyond its initial acquisition. PMID:26474741

Semantic similarity between old and new items produces false alarms in recognition memory.

PubMed

Montefinese, Maria; Zannino, Gian Daniele; Ambrosini, Ettore

2015-09-01

In everyday life, human beings can report memories of past events that did not occur or that occurred differently from the way they remember them because memory is an imperfect process of reconstruction and is prone to distortion and errors. In this recognition study using word stimuli, we investigated whether a specific operationalization of semantic similarity among concepts can modulate false memories while controlling for the possible effect of associative strength and word co-occurrence in an old-new recognition task. The semantic similarity value of each new concept was calculated as the mean cosine similarity between pairs of vectors representing that new concept and each old concept belonging to the same semantic category. Results showed that, compared with (new) low-similarity concepts, (new) high-similarity concepts had significantly higher probability of being falsely recognized as old, even after partialling out the effect of confounding variables, including associative relatedness and lexical co-occurrence. This finding supports the feature-based view of semantic memory, suggesting that meaning overlap and sharing of semantic features (which are greater when more similar semantic concepts are being processed) have an influence on recognition performance, resulting in more false alarms for new high-similarity concepts. We propose that the associative strength and word co-occurrence among concepts are not sufficient to explain illusory memories but is important to take into account also the effects of feature-based semantic relations, and, in particular, the semantic similarity among concepts.

Remote semantic memory is impoverished in hippocampal amnesia.

PubMed

Klooster, Nathaniel B; Duff, Melissa C

2015-12-01

The necessity of the hippocampus for acquiring new semantic concepts is a topic of considerable debate. However, it is generally accepted that any role the hippocampus plays in semantic memory is time limited and that previously acquired information becomes independent of the hippocampus over time. This view, along with intact naming and word-definition matching performance in amnesia, has led to the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in patients with hippocampal amnesia. Motivated by perspectives of word learning as a protracted process where additional features and senses of a word are added over time, and by recent discoveries about the time course of hippocampal contributions to on-line relational processing, reconsolidation, and the flexible integration of information, we revisit the notion that remote semantic memory is intact in amnesia. Using measures of semantic richness and vocabulary depth from psycholinguistics and first and second language-learning studies, we examined how much information is associated with previously acquired, highly familiar words in a group of patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and amnesia. Relative to healthy demographically matched comparison participants and a group of brain-damaged comparison participants, the patients with hippocampal amnesia performed significantly worse on both productive and receptive measures of vocabulary depth and semantic richness. These findings suggest that remote semantic memory is impoverished in patients with hippocampal amnesia and that the hippocampus may play a role in the maintenance and updating of semantic memory beyond its initial acquisition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Temporal Dynamics of Recovery from Extinction Shortly after Extinction Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Archbold, Georgina E.; Dobbek, Nick; Nader, Karim

2013-01-01

Evidence suggests that extinction is new learning. Memory acquisition involves both short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) components; however, few studies have examined early phases of extinction retention. Retention of auditory fear extinction was examined at various time points. Shortly (1-4 h) after extinction acquisition…

Retrieval from Memory: Vulnerable or Inviolable?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Dylan M.; Marsh, John E.; Hughes, Robert W.

2012-01-01

We show that retrieval from semantic memory is vulnerable even to the mere presence of speech. Irrelevant speech impairs semantic fluency--namely, lexical retrieval cued by a semantic category name--but only if it is meaningful (forward speech compared to reversed speech or words compared to nonwords). Moreover, speech related semantically to the…

From sensorimotor learning to memory cells in prefrontal and temporal association cortex: a neurocomputational study of disembodiment.

PubMed

Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Garagnani, Max

2014-08-01

Memory cells, the ultimate neurobiological substrates of working memory, remain active for several seconds and are most commonly found in prefrontal cortex and higher multisensory areas. However, if correlated activity in "embodied" sensorimotor systems underlies the formation of memory traces, why should memory cells emerge in areas distant from their antecedent activations in sensorimotor areas, thus leading to "disembodiment" (movement away from sensorimotor systems) of memory mechanisms? We modelled the formation of memory circuits in six-area neurocomputational architectures, implementing motor and sensory primary, secondary and higher association areas in frontotemporal cortices along with known between-area neuroanatomical connections. Sensorimotor learning driven by Hebbian neuroplasticity led to formation of cell assemblies distributed across the different areas of the network. These action-perception circuits (APCs) ignited fully when stimulated, thus providing a neural basis for long-term memory (LTM) of sensorimotor information linked by learning. Subsequent to ignition, activity vanished rapidly from APC neurons in sensorimotor areas but persisted in those in multimodal prefrontal and temporal areas. Such persistent activity provides a mechanism for working memory for actions, perceptions and symbols, including short-term phonological and semantic storage. Cell assembly ignition and "disembodied" working memory retreat of activity to multimodal areas are documented in the neurocomputational models' activity dynamics, at the level of single cells, circuits, and cortical areas. Memory disembodiment is explained neuromechanistically by APC formation and structural neuroanatomical features of the model networks, especially the central role of multimodal prefrontal and temporal cortices in bridging between sensory and motor areas. These simulations answer the "where" question of cortical working memory in terms of distributed APCs and their inner structure, which is, in part, determined by neuroanatomical structure. As the neurocomputational model provides a mechanistic explanation of how memory-related "disembodied" neuronal activity emerges in "embodied" APCs, it may be key to solving aspects of the embodiment debate and eventually to a better understanding of cognitive brain functions. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Memory color effect induced by familiarity of brand logos.

PubMed

Kimura, Atsushi; Wada, Yuji; Masuda, Tomohiro; Goto, Sho-Ichi; Tsuzuki, Daisuke; Hibino, Haruo; Cai, Dongsheng; Dan, Ippeita

2013-01-01

When people are asked to adjust the color of familiar objects such as fruits until they appear achromatic, the subjective gray points of the objects are shifted away from the physical gray points in a direction opposite to the memory color (memory color effect). It is still unclear whether the discrepancy between memorized and actual colors of objects is dependent on the familiarity of the objects. Here, we conducted two experiments in order to examine the relationship between the degree of a subject's familiarity with objects and the degree of the memory color effect by using logographs of food and beverage companies. In Experiment 1, we measured the memory color effects of logos which varied in terms of their familiarity (high, middle, or low). Results demonstrate that the memory color effect occurs only in the high-familiarity condition, but not in the middle- and low-familiarity conditions. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the memory color effect and the actual number of domestic stores of the brand. In Experiment 2, we assessed the semantic association between logos and food/beverage names by using a semantic priming task to elucidate whether the memory color effect of logos relates to consumer brand cognition, and found that the semantic associations between logos and food/beverage names in the high-familiarity brands were stronger than those in the low-familiarity brands only when the logos were colored correctly, but not when they were appropriately or inappropriately colored, or achromatic. The current results provide behavioral evidence of the relationship between the familiarity of objects and the memory color effect and suggest that the memory color effect increases with the familiarity of objects, albeit not constantly.

Memory Color Effect Induced by Familiarity of Brand Logos

PubMed Central

Kimura, Atsushi; Wada, Yuji; Masuda, Tomohiro; Goto, Sho-ichi; Tsuzuki, Daisuke; Hibino, Haruo; Cai, Dongsheng; Dan, Ippeita

2013-01-01

Background When people are asked to adjust the color of familiar objects such as fruits until they appear achromatic, the subjective gray points of the objects are shifted away from the physical gray points in a direction opposite to the memory color (memory color effect). It is still unclear whether the discrepancy between memorized and actual colors of objects is dependent on the familiarity of the objects. Here, we conducted two experiments in order to examine the relationship between the degree of a subject’s familiarity with objects and the degree of the memory color effect by using logographs of food and beverage companies. Methods and Findings In Experiment 1, we measured the memory color effects of logos which varied in terms of their familiarity (high, middle, or low). Results demonstrate that the memory color effect occurs only in the high-familiarity condition, but not in the middle- and low-familiarity conditions. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the memory color effect and the actual number of domestic stores of the brand. In Experiment 2, we assessed the semantic association between logos and food/beverage names by using a semantic priming task to elucidate whether the memory color effect of logos relates to consumer brand cognition, and found that the semantic associations between logos and food/beverage names in the high-familiarity brands were stronger than those in the low-familiarity brands only when the logos were colored correctly, but not when they were appropriately or inappropriately colored, or achromatic. Conclusion The current results provide behavioral evidence of the relationship between the familiarity of objects and the memory color effect and suggest that the memory color effect increases with the familiarity of objects, albeit not constantly. PMID:23874638

Searching for the Hebb Effect in down Syndrome: Evidence for a Dissociation between Verbal Short-Term Memory and Domain-General Learning of Serial Order

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mosse, E. K.; Jarrold, C.

2010-01-01

Background: The Hebb effect is a form of repetition-driven long-term learning that is thought to provide an analogue for the processes involved in new word learning. Other evidence suggests that verbal short-term memory also constrains now vocabulary acquisition, but if the Hebb effect is independent of short-term memory, then it may be possible…

How do episodic and semantic memory contribute to episodic foresight in young children?

PubMed

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M; Caza, Julian S

2014-01-01

Humans are able to transcend the present and mentally travel to another time, place, or perspective. Mentally projecting ourselves backwards (i.e., episodic memory) or forwards (i.e., episodic foresight) in time are crucial characteristics of the human memory system. Indeed, over the past few years, episodic memory has been argued to be involved both in our capacity to retrieve our personal past experiences and in our ability to imagine and foresee future scenarios. However, recent theory and findings suggest that semantic memory also plays a significant role in imagining future scenarios. We draw on Tulving's definition of episodic and semantic memory to provide a critical analysis of their role in episodic foresight tasks described in the developmental literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions of research that could further our understanding of how both episodic memory and semantic memory are intimately connected to episodic foresight.

How do episodic and semantic memory contribute to episodic foresight in young children?

PubMed Central

Martin-Ordas, Gema; Atance, Cristina M.; Caza, Julian S.

2014-01-01

Humans are able to transcend the present and mentally travel to another time, place, or perspective. Mentally projecting ourselves backwards (i.e., episodic memory) or forwards (i.e., episodic foresight) in time are crucial characteristics of the human memory system. Indeed, over the past few years, episodic memory has been argued to be involved both in our capacity to retrieve our personal past experiences and in our ability to imagine and foresee future scenarios. However, recent theory and findings suggest that semantic memory also plays a significant role in imagining future scenarios. We draw on Tulving’s definition of episodic and semantic memory to provide a critical analysis of their role in episodic foresight tasks described in the developmental literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions of research that could further our understanding of how both episodic memory and semantic memory are intimately connected to episodic foresight. PMID:25071690

Working memory and semantic involvement in sentence processing: a case of pure progressive amnesia.

PubMed

Fossard, Marion; Rigalleau, François; Puel, Michèle; Nespoulous, Jean-Luc; Viallard, Gérard; Démonet, Jean-François; Cardebat, Dominique

2006-01-01

ED, a 83-year-old woman, meets the criteria of pure progressive amnesia, with gradual impairment of episodic and autobiographical memory, sparing of semantic processing and strong working memory (WM) deficit. The dissociation between disturbed WM and spared semantic processing permitted testing the role of WM in processing anaphors like pronouns or repeated names. Results showed a globally normal anaphoric behavior in two experiments requiring anaphoric processing in sentence production and comprehension. We suggest that preserved semantic processing in ED would have compensated for working memory deficit in anaphoric processing.

Sentence Comprehension in Adolescents with down Syndrome and Typically Developing Children: Role of Sentence Voice, Visual Context, and Auditory-Verbal Short-Term Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miolo, Giuliana; Chapman, Robins S.; Sindberg, Heidi A.

2005-01-01

The authors evaluated the roles of auditory-verbal short-term memory, visual short-term memory, and group membership in predicting language comprehension, as measured by an experimental sentence comprehension task (SCT) and the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language--Third Edition (TACL-3; E. Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999) in 38 participants: 19 with…

Comparison of the effects of dose-dependent zinc chloride on short-term and long-term memory in young male rats.

PubMed

Moazedi, A A; Ghotbeddin, Z; Parham, G H

2007-08-15

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of dose-dependent of zinc chloride on short-term and long-term memory in a shuttle box. Young Wistar rats (94+/-10 g) (age 27-30 days) consumed zinc chloride drinking water in five different doses (20, 30, 50, 70 and 100 mg kg(-1) day(-1)) for two weeks by gavage. After 14 days on experimental diets, a shuttle box used to test short- and long-term memory. Two criteria considering for behavioral test, including latency in entering dark chamber and time spent in the dark chamber. This experiment shows that after 2 weeks oral administration of ZnCl2 with (20, 30 and 50 mg kg(-1) day(-1)) doses, the rat's working (short-term) has been improved (p<0.05). Whereas ZnCl2 with 30 mg kg(-1) day(-1) dose has been more effected than other doses (p<0.001). But rat which received ZnCl2 with 100 mg kg(-1) day(-1), has been shown significant impairment in working memory (p<0.05) and there was no significant difference in reference (long-term) memory for any of groups. In general, this study has demonstrated that zinc chloride consumption with 30 mg kg(-1) day(-1) dose for two weeks was more effective than other doses on short-term memory. But consumption of ZnCl2 with 100 mg kg(-1) day(-1) dose for two week had the negative effect on short-term memory. On the other hand, zinc supplementation did not have an effect on long-term memory.

Misremembering what you see or hear: Dissociable effects of modality on short- and long-term false recognition.

PubMed

Olszewska, Justyna M; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A; Munier, Emily; Bendler, Sara A

2015-09-01

False working memories readily emerge using a visual item-recognition variant of the converging associates task. Two experiments, manipulating study and test modality, extended prior working memory results by demonstrating a reliable false recognition effect (more false alarms to associatively related lures than to unrelated lures) within seconds of encoding in either the visual or auditory modality. However, false memories were nearly twice as frequent when study lists were seen than when they were heard, regardless of test modality, although study-test modality mismatch was generally disadvantageous (consistent with encoding specificity). A final experiment that varied study-test modality using a hybrid short- and long-term memory test (Flegal, Atkins & Reuter-Lorenz, 2010) replicated the auditory advantage in the short term but revealed a reversal in the long term: The false memory effect was greater in the auditory study-test condition than in the visual study-test condition. Thus, the same encoding conditions gave rise to an opposite modality advantage depending on whether recognition was tested under short-term or long-term memory conditions. Although demonstrating continuity in associative processing across delay, the results indicate that delay condition affects the availability of modality-dependent features of the memory trace and, thus, distinctiveness, leading to dissociable patterns of short- and long-term memory performance. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Syntax and serial recall: How language supports short-term memory for order.

PubMed

Perham, Nick; Marsh, John E; Jones, Dylan M

2009-07-01

The extent to which familiar syntax supports short-term serial recall of visually presented six-item sequences was shown by the superior recall of lists in which item pairs appeared in the order of "adjective-noun" (items 1-2, 3-4, 5-6)--congruent with English syntax--compared to when the order of items within pairs was reversed. The findings complement other evidence suggesting that short-term memory is an assemblage of language processing and production processes more than it is a bespoke short-term memory storage system.

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.

The association of personal semantic memory to identity representations: insight into higher-order networks of autobiographical contents.

PubMed

Grilli, Matthew D

2017-11-01

Identity representations are higher-order knowledge structures that organise autobiographical memories on the basis of personality and role-based themes of one's self-concept. In two experiments, the extent to which different types of personal semantic content are reflected in these higher-order networks of memories was investigated. Healthy, young adult participants generated identity representations that varied in remoteness of formation and verbally reflected on these themes in an open-ended narrative task. The narrative responses were scored for retrieval of episodic, experience-near personal semantic and experience-far (i.e., abstract) personal semantic contents. Results revealed that to reflect on remotely formed identity representations, experience-far personal semantic contents were retrieved more than experience-near personal semantic contents. In contrast, to reflect on recently formed identity representations, experience-near personal semantic contents were retrieved more than experience-far personal semantic contents. Although episodic memory contents were retrieved less than both personal semantic content types to reflect on remotely formed identity representations, this content type was retrieved at a similar frequency as experience-far personal semantic content to reflect on recently formed identity representations. These findings indicate that the association of personal semantic content to identity representations is robust and related to time since acquisition of these knowledge structures.

No one way ticket from orthography to semantics in recognition memory: N400 and P200 effects of associations.

PubMed

Stuellein, Nicole; Radach, Ralph R; Jacobs, Arthur M; Hofmann, Markus J

2016-05-15

Computational models of word recognition already successfully used associative spreading from orthographic to semantic levels to account for false memories. But can they also account for semantic effects on event-related potentials in a recognition memory task? To address this question, target words in the present study had either many or few semantic associates in the stimulus set. We found larger P200 amplitudes and smaller N400 amplitudes for old words in comparison to new words. Words with many semantic associates led to larger P200 amplitudes and a smaller N400 in comparison to words with a smaller number of semantic associations. We also obtained inverted response time and accuracy effects for old and new words: faster response times and fewer errors were found for old words that had many semantic associates, whereas new words with a large number of semantic associates produced slower response times and more errors. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results indicate that semantic associations between words can facilitate top-down driven lexical access and semantic integration in recognition memory. Our results support neurophysiologically plausible predictions of the Associative Read-Out Model, which suggests top-down connections from semantic to orthographic layers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Early dynamics of the semantic priming shift

PubMed Central

Lavigne, Frédéric; Chanquoy, Lucile; Dumercy, Laurent; Vitu, Françoise

2013-01-01

Semantic processing of sequences of words requires the cognitive system to keep several word meanings simultaneously activated in working memory with limited capacity. The real- time updating of the sequence of word meanings relies on dynamic changes in the associates to the words that are activated. Protocols involving two sequential primes report a semantic priming shift from larger priming of associates to the first prime to larger priming of associates to the second prime, in a range of long SOAs (stimulus-onset asynchronies) between the second prime and the target. However, the possibility for an early semantic priming shift is still to be tested, and its dynamics as a function of association strength remain unknown. Three multiple priming experiments are proposed that cross-manipulate association strength between each of two successive primes and a target, for different values of short SOAs and prime durations. Results show an early priming shift ranging from priming of associates to the first prime only to priming of strong associates to the first prime and all of the associates to the second prime. We investigated the neural basis of the early priming shift by using a network model of spike frequency adaptive cortical neurons (e.g., Deco & Rolls, 2005), able to code different association strengths between the primes and the target. The cortical network model provides a description of the early dynamics of the priming shift in terms of pro-active and retro-active interferences within populations of excitatory neurons regulated by fast and unselective inhibitory feedback. PMID:23717346

The Episodic/Semantic Memory Distinction as an Heuristic in the Study of Instructional Effects on Cognitive Structure.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Konold, Clifford E.; Bates, John A.

1982-01-01

Significant correlations between measures of cognitive structure and performance were found using a procedure distinguishing between episodic and semantic memory as an heuristic with achievement test items. The design increased the likelihood of indications of semantic memory. Higher-order and lower-order cognitive processes are discussed.…

Semantic memory and frontal executive function during transient global amnesia.

PubMed

Hodges, J R

1994-05-01

To assess semantic memory and frontal executive function, two patients underwent neuropsychological testing during transient global amnesia (TGA) and after an interval of 6-8 weeks. In spite of a profound deficit in anterograde verbal and non-verbal memory, semantic memory was normal, as judged by category fluency measures, picture naming, and picture-word and picture-picture matching, and reading ability was normal. Similarly, there were no deficits on a number of tests known to be sensitive to frontal executive dysfunction. A hexamethylpropyleneamine-oxime (HMPAO) single photon emission CT (SPECT) scan, obtained on one patient 24 hours post-TGA, showed focal left temporal lobe hypoperfusion which had resolved three months later. The observed dissociation between episodic and semantic memory is discussed in the light of contemporary cognitive theories of memory organisation.

The Interaction between Semantic Representation and Episodic Memory.

PubMed

Fang, Jing; Rüther, Naima; Bellebaum, Christian; Wiskott, Laurenz; Cheng, Sen

2018-02-01

The experimental evidence on the interrelation between episodic memory and semantic memory is inconclusive. Are they independent systems, different aspects of a single system, or separate but strongly interacting systems? Here, we propose a computational role for the interaction between the semantic and episodic systems that might help resolve this debate. We hypothesize that episodic memories are represented as sequences of activation patterns. These patterns are the output of a semantic representational network that compresses the high-dimensional sensory input. We show quantitatively that the accuracy of episodic memory crucially depends on the quality of the semantic representation. We compare two types of semantic representations: appropriate representations, which means that the representation is used to store input sequences that are of the same type as those that it was trained on, and inappropriate representations, which means that stored inputs differ from the training data. Retrieval accuracy is higher for appropriate representations because the encoded sequences are less divergent than those encoded with inappropriate representations. Consistent with our model prediction, we found that human subjects remember some aspects of episodes significantly more accurately if they had previously been familiarized with the objects occurring in the episode, as compared to episodes involving unfamiliar objects. We thus conclude that the interaction with the semantic system plays an important role for episodic memory.

The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins

PubMed Central

Camina, Eduardo; Güell, Francisco

2017-01-01

This review aims to classify and clarify, from a neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and psychological perspective, different memory models that are currently widespread in the literature as well as to describe their origins. We believe it is important to consider previous developments without which one cannot adequately understand the kinds of models that are now current in the scientific literature. This article intends to provide a comprehensive and rigorous overview for understanding and ordering the latest scientific advances related to this subject. The main forms of memory presented include sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Information from the world around us is first stored by sensory memory, thus enabling the storage and future use of such information. Short-term memory (or memory) refers to information processed in a short period of time. Long-term memory allows us to store information for long periods of time, including information that can be retrieved consciously (explicit memory) or unconsciously (implicit memory). PMID:28713278

The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins.

PubMed

Camina, Eduardo; Güell, Francisco

2017-01-01

This review aims to classify and clarify, from a neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and psychological perspective, different memory models that are currently widespread in the literature as well as to describe their origins. We believe it is important to consider previous developments without which one cannot adequately understand the kinds of models that are now current in the scientific literature. This article intends to provide a comprehensive and rigorous overview for understanding and ordering the latest scientific advances related to this subject. The main forms of memory presented include sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Information from the world around us is first stored by sensory memory, thus enabling the storage and future use of such information. Short-term memory (or memory) refers to information processed in a short period of time. Long-term memory allows us to store information for long periods of time, including information that can be retrieved consciously (explicit memory) or unconsciously (implicit memory).

Retrograde Amnesia for Episodic and Semantic Memories in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment.

PubMed

De Simone, Maria Stefania; Fadda, Lucia; Perri, Roberta; De Tollis, Massimo; Aloisi, Marta; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto

2017-01-01

Retrograde amnesia (RA), which includes loss of memory for past personal events (autobiographical RA) and for acquired knowledge (semantic RA), has been largely documented in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). However, previous studies have produced controversial results particularly concerning the temporal extent of memory impairment. Here we investigated whether, with the onset of hippocampal pathology, age of memory acquisition and retrieval frequency play different roles in modulating the progressive loss of semantic and episodic contents of retrograde memory respectively. For this purpose, aMCI patients and healthy controls were tested for the ability to recall semantic and autobiographical information related to famous public events as a function of both age of acquisition and retrieval frequency. In aMCI patients, we found that the impairment in recollecting past personal incidents was modulated by the combined action of memory age and retrieval frequency, because older and more frequently retrieved episodes are less susceptible to loss than more recent and less frequently retrieved ones. On the other side, we found that the loss of semantic information depended only on memory age, because the remoteness of the trace allows for better preservation of the memory. Our results provide evidence that the loss of the two components of retrograde memory is regulated by different mechanisms. This supports the view that diverse neural mechanisms are involved in episodic and semantic memory trace storage and retrieval, as postulated by the Multiple Trace Theory.

The Metamemory Approach to Confidence: A Test Using Semantic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brewer, William F.; Sampaio, Cristina

2012-01-01

The metamemory approach to memory confidence was extended and elaborated to deal with semantic memory tasks. The metamemory approach assumes that memory confidence is based on the products and processes of a completed memory task, as well as metamemory beliefs that individuals have about how their memory products and processes relate to memory…

The role of early visual cortex in visual short-term memory and visual attention.

PubMed

Offen, Shani; Schluppeck, Denis; Heeger, David J

2009-06-01

We measured cortical activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging to probe the involvement of early visual cortex in visual short-term memory and visual attention. In four experimental tasks, human subjects viewed two visual stimuli separated by a variable delay period. The tasks placed differential demands on short-term memory and attention, but the stimuli were visually identical until after the delay period. Early visual cortex exhibited sustained responses throughout the delay when subjects performed attention-demanding tasks, but delay-period activity was not distinguishable from zero when subjects performed a task that required short-term memory. This dissociation reveals different computational mechanisms underlying the two processes.

Concealed semantic and episodic autobiographical memory electrified.

PubMed

Ganis, Giorgio; Schendan, Haline E

2012-01-01

Electrophysiology-based concealed information tests (CIT) try to determine whether somebody possesses concealed information about a crime-related item (probe) by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) between this item and comparison items (irrelevants). Although the broader field is sometimes referred to as "memory detection," little attention has been paid to the precise type of underlying memory involved. This study begins addressing this issue by examining the key distinction between semantic and episodic memory in the autobiographical domain within a CIT paradigm. This study also addresses the issue of whether multiple repetitions of the items over the course of the session habituate the brain responses. Participants were tested in a 3-stimulus CIT with semantic autobiographical probes (their own date of birth) and episodic autobiographical probes (a secret date learned just before the study). Results dissociated these two memory conditions on several ERP components. Semantic probes elicited a smaller frontal N2 than episodic probes, consistent with the idea that the frontal N2 decreases with greater pre-existing knowledge about the item. Likewise, semantic probes elicited a smaller central N400 than episodic probes. Semantic probes also elicited a larger P3b than episodic probes because of their richer meaning. In contrast, episodic probes elicited a larger late positive complex (LPC) than semantic probes, because of the recent episodic memory associated with them. All these ERPs showed a difference between probes and irrelevants in both memory conditions, except for the N400, which showed a difference only in the semantic condition. Finally, although repetition affected the ERPs, it did not reduce the difference between probes and irrelevants. These findings show that the type of memory associated with a probe has both theoretical and practical importance for CIT research.

Concealed semantic and episodic autobiographical memory electrified

PubMed Central

Ganis, Giorgio; Schendan, Haline E.

2013-01-01

Electrophysiology-based concealed information tests (CIT) try to determine whether somebody possesses concealed information about a crime-related item (probe) by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) between this item and comparison items (irrelevants). Although the broader field is sometimes referred to as “memory detection,” little attention has been paid to the precise type of underlying memory involved. This study begins addressing this issue by examining the key distinction between semantic and episodic memory in the autobiographical domain within a CIT paradigm. This study also addresses the issue of whether multiple repetitions of the items over the course of the session habituate the brain responses. Participants were tested in a 3-stimulus CIT with semantic autobiographical probes (their own date of birth) and episodic autobiographical probes (a secret date learned just before the study). Results dissociated these two memory conditions on several ERP components. Semantic probes elicited a smaller frontal N2 than episodic probes, consistent with the idea that the frontal N2 decreases with greater pre-existing knowledge about the item. Likewise, semantic probes elicited a smaller central N400 than episodic probes. Semantic probes also elicited a larger P3b than episodic probes because of their richer meaning. In contrast, episodic probes elicited a larger late positive complex (LPC) than semantic probes, because of the recent episodic memory associated with them. All these ERPs showed a difference between probes and irrelevants in both memory conditions, except for the N400, which showed a difference only in the semantic condition. Finally, although repetition affected the ERPs, it did not reduce the difference between probes and irrelevants. These findings show that the type of memory associated with a probe has both theoretical and practical importance for CIT research. PMID:23355816