Prefrontal cortex contributions to controlled memory judgment: fMRI evidence from adolescents and young adults

Educators as agents of breadth-biased learning: using social reconstructionism as rationale for embracing media multitasking and enhancing teaching practices in higher education

This perspective article contends that media multitasking has significant implications on cognitive control processes, particularly in how information is processed and utilized. Contrary to viewing media multitasking as inherently negative, the article argues that it contributes to the evolving nature of cognitive processing, without necessarily improving or degrading it. The discussion draws on theoretical frameworks from contemporary cognitive neuroscience to contextualize these arguments. The article provides a nuanced perspective on media multitasking, acknowledging its enduring presence and exploring its influence on cognitive processes, while also proposing strategies for educators to navigate its implications in educational settings.

Towards a conflict account of déjà vu: The role of memory errors and memory expectation conflict in the experience of déjà vu

Déjà vu can be defined as conflict between a subjective evaluation of familiarity and a concurrent evaluation of novelty. Accounts of the déjà vu experience have not explicitly referred to a "conflict account of déjà vu" despite the acceptance of conflict-based definitions of déjà vu and relatively recent neuroimaging work that has implicated brain areas associated with conflict as underpinning the experience. Conflict monitoring functioning follows a similar age-related trajectory to déjà vu with a peak in young adulthood and a subsequent age-related decline. In this narrative review of the literature to date, we consider how déjà vu is defined and how this has influenced the understanding of déjà vu. We also review how déjà vu can be understood within theories of recognition memory and cognitive control. Finally, we summarise the conflict account of déjà vu and propose that this account of the experience may provide a coherent explanation as to why déjà vu experiences tend to decrease with age in the non-clinical population.

False reports of an accomplice in a crime scene: conformity effects on memory confidence and accuracy

Abstract The memory reports of a given individual may be altered by preceding memory reports of another individual, a phenomenon termed memory conformity. To investigate this phenomenon, 58 undergraduate students were separated in two groups which watched one of two slightly different movies of a crime scene (one included an accomplice). Subsequently, pairs containing one participant from each group discussed the movie, and then participants responded individually whether there was an accomplice in the scene. The frequency of false reports and their confidence for the presence/absence of the accomplice were analyzed. Only false reports of seeing an accomplice were produced (by 31% of those who saw no accomplice), and confidence were as high for these responses as for correct “no-accomplice” responses. The data is consistent with prior findings, and show that confidence on false reports can be high when involving “insertion” of elements to witnessed events.

Differing Time of Onset of Concurrent TMS-fMRI during Associative Memory Encoding: A Measure of Dynamic Connectivity

There has been a distinct shift in neuroimaging from localization of function into a more network based approach focused on connectivity. While fMRI has proven very fruitful for this, the hemodynamic signal is inherently slow which limits the temporal resolution of fMRI-only connectivity measures. The brain, however, works on a time scale of milliseconds. This study utilized concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-fMRI in a novel way to obtain measures of dynamic connectivity by measuring changes in fMRI signal amplitude in regions distal to the site of stimulation following differing TMS onset times. Seventeen healthy subjects completed an associative memory encoding task known to involve the DLPFC, viewing pairs of objects which could be semantically related or unrelated. Three pulses of 10 Hz repetitive TMS were applied over the left DLPFC starting either at 200, 600, or 1000 ms after stimulus onset. Associations for related pairs were better remembered than unrelated pairs in a post-scan cued recall test. Differences in neural activity were assessed across different TMS onsets, separately for related and unrelated pairs. Time specific TMS effects were observed in several regions, including those associated with higher-level processing (lateral frontal, anterior cingulate), visual areas (occipital), and regions involved in semantic processing (e.g., left mid-temporal and medial frontal). Activity in the frontal cortex was decreased at 200 ms post-stimulus for unrelated pairs, and 1000 ms post-stimulus for related pairs. This suggests differences in the timing across conditions in which the DLFPC interacts with other PFC regions, consistent with the notion that the DLPFC is facilitating extended semantic processing for related items. This study demonstrates that time-varying TMS onset inside the MRI can be used to reliably measure fast dynamic connectivity with a temporal resolution in the hundreds of milliseconds.

Cognitive control and episodic memory in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

INTRODUCTION

To further investigate manifestations of episodic memory impairments in adolescents, we examined the role of encoding on recognition of stimuli in conditions designed to emphasize their item-specific versus relational characteristics in a group of 12-18 year olds with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We also examined how strategic learning and memory processes, verbal abilities, attention, and age were associated with recognition in this group.

MATERIALS AND METHOD

Twenty two high functioning adolescents with ASD (mean age=15 years; SD=1.8; range=12.2-17.9), and 26 age, gender, and IQ-matched adolescents with typical development (TYP) (mean age=14.7 years; SD=1.9; range=12.3-17.8) completed the Relational and Item-Specific Encoding task (RiSE), the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C), the Wechsler Abbreviated Scales of Intelligence, and the Connors' Parent Rating Scale-Revised. Univariate statistical analyses were performed.

RESULTS

The ASD group showed poorer performance on strategic memory assessed by the CVLT-C. Surprisingly, on the RiSE, ASD showed poorer discriminability for objects encoded in item-specific versus relational encoding conditions and were more impaired in familiarity (after relational encoding) than in recollection. ASD also did not show the hypothesized association between item and associative recognition and CVLT-C performance found in TYP. Instead, in the ASD group recognition was associated with increased age.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from the RiSE task demonstrated that adolescents with ASD do not always exhibit impaired memory for relational information as commonly believed. Instead, memory was worse when cognitive control demands were high, when encoding focused on specific item features, and when familiarity was used to retrieve relational information. Recognition also was better in older participants. This suggests that learning and memory deficits in adolescents with ASD, may not be due primarily to failed relational binding processes in the hippocampus but, rather to disrupted strategic memory and familiarity processes associated with the prefrontal and perirhinal cortices. These findings demonstrate the importance and utility of using well-validated cognitive neuroscience tasks and of considering the ages of participants when comparing the neural underpinnings of different memory processes in both typical and atypical populations.

Neural Signatures of Controlled and Automatic Retrieval Processes in Memory-based Decision-making

Decision-making often requires retrieval from memory. Drawing on the neural ACT-R theory [Anderson, J. R., Fincham, J. M., Qin, Y., & Stocco, A. A central circuit of the mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 136-143, 2008] and other neural models of memory, we delineated the neural signatures of two fundamental retrieval aspects during decision-making: automatic and controlled activation of memory representations. To disentangle these processes, we combined a paradigm developed to examine neural correlates of selective and sequential memory retrieval in decision-making with a manipulation of associative fan (i.e., the decision options were associated with one, two, or three attributes). The results show that both the automatic activation of all attributes associated with a decision option and the controlled sequential retrieval of specific attributes can be traced in material-specific brain areas. Moreover, the two facets of memory retrieval were associated with distinct activation patterns within the frontoparietal network: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was found to reflect increasing retrieval effort during both automatic and controlled activation of attributes. In contrast, the superior parietal cortex only responded to controlled retrieval, arguably reflecting the sequential updating of attribute information in working memory. This dissociation in activation pattern is consistent with ACT-R and constitutes an important step toward a neural model of the retrieval dynamics involved in memory-based decision-making.