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Written memoranda of conversations, or memcons, provide a near‐contemporaneous record of what was said in conversation, and offer important insights into the activities of high‐profile individuals. We assess the impact of writing a memcon on memory for conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in conversation and were asked to recall the contents of that conversation 1 week later. One participant in each pair memorialized the content of the interaction in a memcon shortly after the conversation. Participants who generated memcons recalled more details of the conversations than participants who did not, but the content of recall was equally and largely accurate for both participants. Remarkably, only 4.7% of the details of the conversation were recalled by both of the partners after a week delay. Contemporaneous note‐taking appears to enhance memory for conversation by increasing the amount of information remembered but not the accuracy of that information. These findings have implications for evaluating the testimony of participants on conversations with major political or legal ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that memory is involved in making simulations and predictions about the future (i.e., future thinking), but less work has examined how the outcome of those predictions (whether events play out as predicted or expected) subsequently affects episodic memory. In this investigation, we examine whether memory is better for outcomes that are consistent with predictions, or whether memory is enhanced for outcomes that are inconsistent with predictions, after the predicted event occurs. In this experiment, participants learned a core trait associated with social targets (e.g., high in extroversion), before making predictions about behaviors targets would perform. Participants then were shown behaviors the social targets actually performed (i.e., prediction outcome), which was either consistent or inconsistent with predictions. After that, participants completed a memory test (recognition; recall) for the prediction outcomes. For recognition, the results revealed better memory for outcomes that were consistent with traits associated with targets (i.e., trait‐consistent outcomes), compared to outcomes that were inconsistent (i.e., trait‐inconsistent outcomes). Finding a memory advantage for trait‐consistent outcomes suggests that outcomes that are in line with the contents of memory (e.g., what one knows; schemas) are more readily remembered than those that are inconsistent with memory, which may reflect an adaptive memory process. For recall, memory did not differ between trait‐consistent and trait‐inconsistent outcomes. Altogether, the results of this experiment advance understanding of the reciprocal relationship between episodic memory and future thinking and show that outcome of predictions has an influence on subsequent episodic memory, at least as measured by recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even clinically "asymptomatic" carotid stenosis is associated with multidomain cognitive impairment, gray matter (GM) atrophy, and silent lesion. However, the links between them remain unclear. Using structural MRI data, we examined GM asymmetry index (AI) and white matter hyperintensity (WMH) in 24 patients with severe asymptomatic carotid stenosis (SACS), 24 comorbidity‐matched controls, and independent samples of 84 elderly controls and 22 young adults. As compared to controls, SACS patients showed worse verbal memories, higher WMH burden, and right‐lateralized GM in posterior middle temporal and mouth‐somatomotor regions. These clusters extended to pars triangularis, lateral temporal, and cerebellar regions, when compared with young adults. Further, a full‐path of WMH burden (X), GM volume (atrophy, M1), AI (asymmetry, M2), and neuropsychological variables (Y) through a serial mediation model was analyzed. This analysis identified that left‐dominated GM atrophy and right‐lateralized asymmetry in the posterior middle temporal cortex mediated the relationship between WMH burden and recall memory in SACS patients. These results suggest that the unbalanced hemispheric atrophy in the posterior middle temporal cortex is crucial to mediating relationship between WMH burden and verbal recall memories, which may underlie accelerated aging and cognitive deterioration in patients with SACS and other vascular cognitive impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper presents two experiments investigating the effect of presence versus absence of compulsory number marking in a native language on a speaker's ability to recall number information from photos. In Experiment 1, monolingual English and Japanese adults were shown a sequence of 110 photos after which they were asked questions about the photos. We found that the English participants showed a significantly higher accuracy rate for questions testing recall for number information when the correct answer was "2" (instead of "1") than Japanese participants. In Experiment 2, English and Japanese adults engaged in the same task as in Experiment 1 with an addition that explored reasons for the results found in Experiment 1. The results of Experiment 2 were in line with the results of Experiment 1, but also suggested that the results could not be attributed to differences in guessing patterns between the two groups or the type of linguistic constructions used in the test situations. The current study suggests that native language affects speakers' ability to recall number information from scenes and thus provides evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Donor-recipient HLA compatibility is an important determinant of transplant outcomes. Allele-group to allele-level imputations help assign HLA genotypes when allele-level genotypes are not available during donor selection. Methods We evaluated the performance of HaploStats, an allele-level multi-locus HLA genotype imputation tool from the National Marrow Donor Program, in a cross-sectional study including hematopoietic stem cell donors (HSCD) from Quebec, Canada. A total of 144 self-identified Caucasian HSCD genotyped at the allele-group and allele-level for HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, and -DQB1 loci were studied. We compared allele-level genotypes imputed by HaploStats to those obtained by the reference standard, sequenced-based typing (SBT). Results Imputation performance, determined by allele-level genotype recall (fraction of matching imputed and sequenced genotypes) was 97%, 96%, 95%, 84%, and 81% for HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, and -DQB1 loci, respectively. Our sample deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium only at the HLA-DRB1 locus. Residual ambiguity, determined by typing resolution scores (TRS), was greatest for HLA class II loci (average TRS 0.65 and 0.80 for DRB1 and DQB1, respectively). In contrast, average TRS of 0.88, 0.84, and 0.92 was observed for HLA-A, -B, and -C, respectively. Conclusions HLA allele imputation from ambiguous genotypes demonstrate satisfactory prediction accuracy for HLA class I but modest prediction accuracy for HLA class II loci in self-identified Caucasian HSCD from Quebec. While consideration of high-resolution allele and haplotype frequencies in the Quebec population may improve the performance of available allele-level multi-locus genotype imputation tools in Quebec, this study suggests that genotyping at the first two field level should be conducted whenever possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context Patient recall of treatment information is a key variable towards chronic disease ( CD) management. It is unclear what communication and patient participation characteristics predict recall. Objectives To assess what aspects of doctor-patient communication predict patient recall of medication information. To describe lifestyle treatment recall, in CD primary care patients. Design Observational study within a RCT. Setting & participants Community-based primary care ( PC) practices. Family physicians (n=18): practicing >5 years, with a CD patient caseload. Patients (n=159): >40 years old, English speaking, computer literate, off-target hypertension, type II diabetes and/or dyslipidaemia. Main variables Patient characteristics: age, education, number of CDs. Information characteristics: length of encounter, medication status, medication class. Communication variables: socio-emotional utterances, physician dominance and communication control scores and PACE (ask, check and express) utterances, measured by RIAS. Number of medication themes, dialogue and initiative measured by MEDICODE. Main outcome measures Recall of CD, lifestyle treatment and medication information. Results Frequency of lifestyle discussions varied by topic. Patients recalled 43% (alcohol), 52% (diet) to 70% (exercise) of discussions. Two and a half of six possible medication themes were broached per medication discussion. Less than one was recalled. Discussing more themes, greater dialogue and patient initiative were significant predictors of improved medication information recall. Discussion Critical treatment information is infrequently exchanged. Active patient engagement and explicit conversations about medications are associated with improved treatment information recall in off-target CD patients followed in PC. Conclusion Providers cannot take for granted that long-term off-target CD patients recall information. They need to encourage patient participation to improve recall of treatment information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multivariate functional connectivity analyses of neuroimaging data have revealed the importance of complex, distributed interactions between disparate yet interdependent brain regions. Recent work has shown that topological properties of functional brain networks are associated with individual and group differences in cognitive performance, including in episodic memory. After constructing functional whole-brain networks derived from an event-related fMRI study of memory retrieval, we examined differences in functional brain network architecture between forgotten and remembered words. This study yielded three main findings. First, graph theory analyses showed that successfully remembering compared to forgetting was associated with significant changes in the connectivity profile of the left hippocampus and a corresponding increase in efficient communication with the rest of the brain. Second, bivariate functional connectivity analyses indicated stronger interactions between the left hippocampus and a retrieval assembly for remembered versus forgotten items. This assembly included the left precuneus, left caudate, bilateral supramarginal gyrus, and the bilateral dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus. Integrative properties of the retrieval assembly were greater for remembered than forgotten items. Third, whole-brain modularity analyses revealed that successful memory retrieval was marginally significantly associated with a less segregated modular architecture in the network. The magnitude of the decreases in modularity between remembered and forgotten conditions was related to memory performance. These findings indicate that increases in integrative properties at the nodal, retrieval assembly, and whole-brain topological levels facilitate memory retrieval, while also underscoring the potential of multivariate brain connectivity approaches for providing valuable new insights into the neural bases of memory processes. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2242-2259, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While fMRI activation studies contrasting task conditions regularly assess the whole brain, this is usually not true for studies analyzing task-dependent brain connectivity changes by psychophysiological interactions (PPI). Here we combine standard PPI (sPPI) and generalized PPI (gPPI) with a priori brain parcellation by spatially constrained normalized cut spectral clustering (NCUT) to analyze task-dependent connectivity changes in a whole brain manner, and compare the results to multiseed conventional PPI analyses over all activation peaks in an episodic memory recall task. We show that, depending on the chosen parcellation frame, the whole-brain PPI approach is able to detect a large amount of the information that is detected by the conventional approach. Over and above, whole-brain PPI allows identification of several additional task-modulated connections, particularly from seed regions without significant activation differences between conditions. Hum Brain Mapp 35:5071-5082, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters are continuously bombarded with information during political campaigns, yet a consistent conclusion from research on voter learning is that individuals remember far less information about political candidates than one might expect. What remains unclear is why memory for campaign information is so poor. The present study examines two explanations for memory failure. Using an experimental design, the present study explores whether campaign information fades from memory (trace decay) or whether extraneous information impedes an individual's subsequent ability to recall campaign information (interference). The results suggest that examining the ways in which the larger information environment influences recall of campaign information has important implications for the importance we attribute to campaign information in models of voter decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The rapid forgetting of information over long (but not short) delays (accelerated long-term forgetting [ALF]) has been associated with temporal lobe epilepsy but not idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). Long-term memory formation (consolidation) is thought to demand an interaction between medial temporal and neocortical networks, which could be disrupted by epilepsy/seizures themselves. The present study investigates whether ALF is present in children with IGE and whether it relates to epilepsy severity. Methods: Sixty-one children (20 with IGE and 41 healthy controls [HC]) of comparable age, sex, and parental socioeconomic status completed neuropsychological tests, including a measure of verbal learning and recall after, short (30-min) and long (7-day) delays, and recognition. Epilepsy severity was rated by treating neurologists. Key Findings: A two-way repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) found a significant Group x Delay interaction; the children with IGE recalled (and recognized) significantly fewer words after a long, but not short (2- and 30-min) delay relative to the HC children. Moreover, greater epilepsy severity was associated with poorer recognition. Significance: This study demonstrates, to our knowledge for the first time, that children with IGE present with ALF, which is related to epilepsy severity. These findings support the notion that epilepsy/seizures themselves may disrupt long-term memory consolidation, which interferes with day-to-day functioning of children with IGE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic variants that are related to the dopaminergic system have been frequently found to be associated with various neurological and mental disorders. Here, we studied the relationships between some of these genetic variants and some cognitive and psychophysiological processes that are implicated in such disorders. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms were chosen: one in the dopamine D2 receptor gene (rs6277-C957T) and one in the catechol- O-methyltransferase gene (rs4680-Val158Met), which is involved in the metabolic degradation of dopamine. The performance of participants on two long-term memory tasks was assessed: free recall (declarative memory) and mirror drawing (procedural motor learning). Heart rate (HR) was also monitored during the initial trials of the mirror-drawing task, which is considered to be a laboratory middle-stress generator (moderate stress), and during a rest period (low stress). Data were collected from 213 healthy Caucasian university students. The C957T C homozygous participants showed more rapid learning than the T allele carriers in the procedural motor learning task and smaller differences in HR between the moderate- and the low-stress conditions. These results provide useful information regarding phenotypic variance in both healthy individuals and patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political observers often criticize the news media's focus on scandalous activities of candidates as distracting voters from the 'real issues.' However, the extent to which such a fondness for scandal influences voters remains unclear. The present study examines whether exposure to scandalous information about a candidate interferes with memory for policy-related information. Two possibilities are considered. One possibility is that scandalous information attracts substantial attention and processing from individuals thereby interfering with previously stored campaign information. A second possibility argues that conceiving of memory as organized in associative networks suggests that scandalous information facilitates, rather than interferes with, recall of policy-related campaign information. Based on data from a longitudinal experiment, I conclude that exposure to scandalous information is less hazardous to voters than is often suggested by political observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breastfed children have lower risk of infectious diseases, post-neonatal mortality and chronic diseases later in life. Because epidemiologic studies usually rely on reported history of previous breastfeeding, data on the accuracy and precision of recalled histories allow improved interpretation of the epidemiologic findings. We evaluated the reliability of two reported breastfeeding durations in 567 reproductive-aged women from Mexico using information obtained from nearly identical sets of questions applied at different times after weaning. We compared differences between reports, and examined the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for any and for exclusive breastfeeding (EBF). Logistic regression was used to evaluate the determinants of poor recall (difference between reports of >20%). The reliability of duration of any breastfeeding was high (ICC 0.94). Overall, differences between reports of duration were usually <1 month, and for 385/567, the difference was ≤0.5 months. Predictors of poorer recall were having ≥4 children, and time between reports of >2 months. The only predictor of better recall was greater age of the baby at weaning. The reliability of EBF duration was lower (ICC 0.49). In this population with a relatively long duration of breastfeeding, reliability of any breastfeeding duration was high. Age, education and previous breastfeeding were not important predictors of recall, in contrast to findings in earlier studies. Consistent with previous reports, however, parity and length of recall were associated with poorer recall of duration of any breastfeeding. Future studies that use reported breastfeeding duration may want to consider the effect of these variables on recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that emotional response to information encountered in campaigns has implications for the likelihood of remembering that information at the time of the vote. Most voting models are built on what voters remember—whether it is the placement of candidates on issues, or opened ended responses to prompts. That recall of memory is biased is well-known, but the extent to which those biases are driven by affective response to candidate information has not been studied. Using dynamic process tracing, we examine voters' emotional responses, information search, and candidate evaluations during a simulated presidential primary campaign. By manipulating anxiety and the amount of incongruent information that voters encounter, we can detect the direct influence of affect in information processing. We find evidence that voters are more likely to remember information that generates any affective reaction as opposed to information for which the subjects report no emotional response. However, we find little evidence that anxiety has a special role, compared to enthusiasm or anger, in increasing the likelihood that an individual item is remembered. This challenges a primary contention of the theory of Affective Intelligence that anxiety leads to more memories for campaign information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]