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The hippocampus is crucial for acquiring and retrieving episodic and contextual memories. In previous studies, the inactivation of dentate gyrus (DG) neurons by chemogenetic- and optogenetic-mediated hyperpolarization led to opposing conclusions about DG's role in memory retrieval. One study used Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD)-mediated clozapine N-oxide (CNO)-induced hyperpolarization and reported that the previously formed memory was erased, thus concluding that denate gyrus is needed for memory maintenance. The other study used optogenetic with halorhodopsin induced hyperpolarization and reported and dentate gyrus is needed for memory retrieval. We hypothesized that this apparent discrepancy could be due to the length of hyperpolarization in previous studies; minutes by optogenetics and several hours by DREADD/CNO. Since hyperpolarization interferes with anterograde and retrograde neuronal signaling, it is possible that the memory engram in the dentate gyrus and the entorhinal to hippocampus trisynaptic circuit was erased by long-term, but not with short-term hyperpolarization. We developed and applied an advanced chemogenetic technology to selectively silence synaptic output by blocking neurotransmitter release without hyperpolarizing DG neurons to explore this apparent discrepancy. We performed in vivo electrophysiology during trace eyeblink in a rabbit model of associative learning. Our work shows that the DG output is required for memory retrieval. Based on previous and recent findings, we propose that the actively functional anterograde and retrograde neuronal signaling is necessary to preserve synaptic memory engrams along the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampal trisynaptic circuit., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The pretesting effect refers to the finding that tests performed before to-be learned material is encountered can enhance later retention of the material, even when no correct answers were provided on the initial pretest. The goal of the present study was to examine whether interspersing pretest questions between the study of multiple segments consisting of prose passages can induce a pretesting effect on a final cumulative recall test on all segments. To this end, participants studied four segments which were either thematically related (Experiment 1) or distinct (Experiment 2) and either received pretest questions about each segment immediately prior to study of the segment (pretest condition) or not (study-only condition). Results of the cumulative final test performed 24 h after study of the segments showed for both experiments that interpolated pretesting enhanced correct recall of the segments. The findings thus suggest that the positive effects of pretesting on memory generalize from the standard single-list design to a multiplelists design when pretests are performed prior to study of each list. Interpolated pretesting thus may play a critical role as a potential learning tool in educational practice., Competing Interests: Declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This study investigates the impact of the reflective-impulsive dimension of cognitive styles on recollection and the accuracy of a criminal events. In a VR-based experimental study, 150 participants were exposed to both criminal and neutral scenarios and subsequently asked to report everything they remembered about them. Cognitive styles were assessed using a computer-administered Matching Familiar Figures Test. The findings highlight that individuals with a reflective cognitive style consistently provided detailed descriptions of the events, irrespective of the context of encoding. In contrast, individuals with an impulsive cognitive style displayed context-specific effects, notably reduced performance when recalling emotionally charged criminal events. Notably, cognitive style did not moderate the accuracy of testimony. Given that the subjects who observed the crime achieved a lower overall accuracy rate than those who observed the neutral video, it appears that accuracy is directly affected by the criminal content., Competing Interests: Declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Depression is characterized by a loss of positive and pronounced negative memory bias, which persists after remission. While theoretical accounts of depressive realism, emotional inertia, and mood-congruency substantiate the compelling evidence of weak positive memory in depression, they cannot fully explain negative memory bias in depression. We used Ecologically Momentary Assessments (EMA) of memory bias to provide insight into the accuracy and depression status-dependency of recall of previous positive and negative mood states. Currently- (n = 46), remitted- (n = 90), and never-depressed individuals (n = 55) provided positive mood and negative mood ratings (7x/day for six days), while also recalling their recent (i.e., previous prompt; 3x/day) or distal (i.e., one day lag; 1x/day) mood states. Currently depressed individuals displayed most accuracy and hence least bias in recall of both positive and negative mood; with accuracy in currently and remitted depressed individuals being independent of their current mood state. Conversely, mood at the time of recall significantly related to memory accuracy among never-depressed individuals with more negative mood, resulting in a depressotypic memory bias. Results are consistent with depressive realism and mood-congruency accounts, as well as with evidence for loss of positive memory bias (but not for negative memory bias) in depression., Competing Interests: Declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Contrary to common intuition, a group of people recalling information together remembers less than the same number of individuals recalling alone (i.e., the collaborative inhibition effect). To understand this effect in a free recall task, we build a computational model of collaborative recall in groups, extended from the Context Maintenance and Retrieval (CMR) model, which captures how individuals recall information alone. We propose that in collaborative recall, one not only uses their previous recall as an internal retrieval cue, but one also listens to someone else's recall and uses it as an external retrieval cue. Attending to this cue updates the listener's context to be more similar to the context of someone else's recall. Over an existing dataset of individual and collaborative recall in small and large groups, we show that our model successfully captures the difference in memory performance between individual recall and collaborative recall across different group sizes from 2 to 16, as well as additional recall patterns such as recency effects and semantic clustering effects. Our model further shows that collaborating individuals reach similar areas in the context space, whereby their contexts converge more than the contexts of individuals recalling alone. This convergence constrains their ability to search memories effectively and is negatively associated with recall performance. We discuss the contributions of our modeling results in relation to previous accounts of the collaborative inhibition effect., Competing Interests: Declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Purpose: Retrieval practice has been shown to assist the word learning of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Although this has been true for learning new verbs as well as new nouns and adjectives, these children's overall verb learning has remained quite low. In this preregistered study, we presented novel verbs in transitive sentences with varying subjects/agents and objects/patients to determine if recall could be improved and if retrieval practice continued to be facilitative., Method: Fourteen children with DLD aged 4-5 years and 13 same-age peers with typical language development (TD) learned eight novel verbs over two sessions. Half of the novel verbs were presented with spacing between study and retrieval trials, and half were presented with the same frequency in study trials without the opportunity for retrieval. All novel verbs were presented in sentences such as, "The woman is deeking the shoe." Children's ability to recall and use the novel verbs in the same sentence structure was tested after the second session and 1 week later. The children were also required to use the novel verbs in bare-stem form in a new structure, as in, "That woman likes to deek the towel.", Results: Both groups of children showed increased recall relative to a previous novel verb study. The children with TD showed the expected advantages of spaced retrieval over repeated study and could use the novel verbs in the new morphological form and sentence structure. The children with DLD, however, showed an advantage for spaced retrieval only shortly after the learning period. These children had great difficulty changing the novel verbs to a bare stem and using them in a new structure., Conclusion: Although spaced retrieval assists children's novel verb recall, children with DLD in particular require additional help using these verbs with morphological and syntactic flexibility.

We investigated how lexical form similarity of referential candidates and ambiguity of following pronouns impact the encoding and retrieval of words from memory during sentence processing in younger and older adults. Critical sentences included two noun phrases (henceforth NPs) that were either phonologically and orthographically similar (Jason and Jacob/Jade) or dissimilar (Jason and Matt/Hannah), followed by a pronoun (e.g., he) that was either ambiguous or unambiguous (depending on the genders of the preceding NPs). We analyzed brain activity time-locked to the onsets of the second NP (NP2) and the pronoun to investigate the encoding and the retrieval of the NPs, respectively. During encoding NP2, older adults exhibited greater alpha power when NP1 had the same-gender, whereas younger adults showed no such effect, suggesting an increased need for inhibition for older adults during encoding. Moreover, although both groups exhibited an increase in alpha power for similar NPs, only younger adults exhibited a theta power increase, suggesting similarity-induced inhibition for both groups, but an additional maintenance cost only for younger adults. During retrieval (i.e., on the pronoun), we found that both pronominal ambiguity and form similarity resulted in greater theta power for younger adults, suggesting full pronominal processing and therefore more difficult retrieval, but smaller theta/alpha power for older adults, suggesting good-enough processing and therefore easier retrieval. Together with complementary behavioral results, our findings suggest that older adults resort to good-enough referential processing when the retrieval of relevant representations is cognitively demanding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies have found that face perception deficits do not fully account for the severity of face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Researchers have begun identifying deficient memory mechanisms such as impaired face recollection, but these findings require replication, and further characterization of additional memory deficits is necessary. Our goals were to replicate prior findings of face recollection impairment in DP and extend these findings to assess different types of face associative memory. We had 69 DPs and 99 controls perform a face perception battery as well as three face memory tasks: 1) Old/New task with confidence ratings to calculate recollection and familiarity using ROC analysis, 2) Face/Scene task to examine remember-know judgments and contextual memory for faces, and 3) Face-Name/Occupation task to assess the ability to learn semantic associations with faces. Compared to controls, DPs showed poorer recollection and familiarity across both Old/New and Face/Scene tasks as well as reduced scene accuracy for correct faces. Of these differences, only Old/New recollection remained significant after controlling for group differences in face perception abilities. In the Face-Name/Occupation task, after controlling for face perception, DPs showed poorer recall of names than controls but performed similarly in recalling occupations. Finally, we found that DPs with major, mild, and no face perception deficits showed consistent impairments in Old/New recollection and face-naming, and larger perceptual deficits were associated with larger memory deficits. Together, these results provide several mechanistic insights into the nature of memory deficits in DPs and have diagnostic and treatment implications., (Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

A key question for understanding the function of the hippocampus in memory is how information is recalled from the hippocampus to the neocortex. This was investigated in a neuronal network model of the hippocampal system in which "What" and "Where" neuronal firing rate vectors were applied to separate neocortical modules, which then activated entorhinal cortex "What" and "Where" modules, then the dentate gyrus, then CA3, then CA1, then the entorhinal cortex, and then the backprojections to the neocortex. A rate model showed that the whole system could be trained to recall "Where" in the neocortex from "What" applied as a retrieval cue to the neocortex, and could in principle be trained up towards the theoretical capacity determined largely by the number of synapses onto any one neuron divided by the sparseness of the representation. The trained synaptic weights were then imported into an integrate-and-fire simulation of the same architecture, which showed that the time from presenting a retrieval cue to a neocortex module to recall the whole memory in the neocortex is approximately 100 ms. This is sufficiently fast for the backprojection synapses to be trained onto the still active neocortical neurons during storage of the episodic memory, and this is needed for recall to operate correctly to the neocortex. These simulations also showed that the long loop neocortex-hippocampus-neocortex that operates continuously in time may contribute to complete recall in the neocortex; but that this positive feedback long loop makes the whole dynamical system inherently liable to a pathological increase in neuronal activity. Important factors that contributed to stability included increased inhibition in CA3 and CA1 to keep the firing rates low; and temporal adaptation of the neuronal firing and of active synapses, which are proposed to make an important contribution to stabilizing runaway excitation in cortical circuits in the brain., (© 2024 The Author(s). Hippocampus published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Collaboration has an essential role in memory, and how to appropriately use it to affect individual memory positively is a matter of concern. The meta-analysis generally assessed the effect of collaboration on subsequent individual retrieval, registered on the PROSPERO platform and adhering to the PRISMA guidelines, using the Web of Science, Science Direct, CNKI and WanFang databases with post-collaborative memory as the main subject, screened studies published up to December 31, 2023, a total of 64 studies with 101 effect sizes, including 13,398 participants from 11 countries. Heterogeneity test, sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis and meta-regression analysis were performed on the included studies, while publication bias was assessed. The results found that collaboration improves subsequent individual retrieval memory more than individuals, and collaboration has a moderate facilitating effect on subsequent individual retrieval. Group size, material category, category size, collaboration phase, collaboration approach, task process and test method were among the moderating variables. The study emphasizes the role of collaboration in cognition and demonstrates the post-collaborative benefits. The conclusions are of value for developing methods to improve individual memory., (© 2024 The British Psychological Society.)

When recalling autobiographical events, people not only retrieve event details but also the feelings they experienced. The current study examined whether people are able to consistently recall the intensity of past feelings associated with two consequential and negatively valenced events, i.e. the 9/11 attack ( N  = 769) and the COVID-19 pandemic ( N  = 726). By comparing experienced and recalled intensities of negative feelings, we discovered that people systematically recall a higher intensity of negative feelings than initially reported - overestimating the intensity of past negative emotional experiences. The COVID-19 dataset also revealed that individuals who experienced greater improvement in emotional well-being displayed smaller biases in recalling their feelings. Across both datasets, the intensity of remembered feelings was correlated with initial feelings and current feelings, but the impact of the current feelings was stronger in the COVID-19 dataset than in the 9/11 dataset. Our results demonstrate that when recalling negative autobiographical events, people tend to overestimate the intensity of prior negative emotional experiences with their degree of bias influenced by current feelings and well-being.

People spontaneously segment an observed everyday activity into discrete, meaningful events, but segmentation can be modified by task goals. Asking young adults to attend to event segmentation while watching movies of everyday actions improved their memory up to 1 month later (Flores et al., 2017). Does attending to event segmentation improve memory across the lifespan? Participants between the ages of 20 and 79 watched movies of actors performing everyday activities while intentionally encoding them for a recall and a recognition memory test 1 week (Experiment 1) or 1 month (Experiment 2) later. In addition to intentionally encoding the movies, half of the participants segmented the movies into fine-grained events. Young adults who segmented recalled more words in their recall responses than those who intentionally encoded 1 week and 1 month later. Middle-aged adults benefited from the intervention after a 1-week delay but not after a 1-month delay. Older adults over the age of 70 did not benefit from attending to segmentation. Of those who segmented, young and older adults showed similar agreement about the locations of event boundaries. Together, the results suggest that older adults are less able, compared to young adults, to maintain or retrieve well-encoded event memories after a delay. In addition, individual differences in segmentation agreement predicted memory up to 1 month later, regardless of age. These results suggest a practical and easy-to-implement intervention for improving recall of everyday events in young and middle-aged adults that is ineffective in older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Studies have shown that enactment improves memory; however, in daily life, our memories of motor events often exhibit a relative temporal order. Therefore, this study examined whether enactment promotes relative temporal order memory. In Experiment 1, a sequential recall task and a subject-performed task were used to explore whether enactment encoding improved relative temporal order memory. The results showed that the relative temporal order memory of the enactment-encoding group was significantly better than that of the verbal-encoding group, indicating that enactment promoted relative temporal order memory. Since temporal order memory is often affected by spatial cues, in Experiment 2, we further controlled spatial cues and used a 2 (spatial cues: consistent with temporal order, vs. no cues) × 2 (encoding type: verbal vs. enactment) design to explore whether spatial cues influence the effect of enactment encoding on temporal order memory. The results showed that compared with verbal encoding, enactment encoding significantly improved relative temporal order memory. However, no effect of spatial cues on relative temporal order memory was found. Our study confirmed that enactment encoding promotes relative temporal order memory performance independent of spatial cues., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Marta Olivetti Belardinelli.)

False memories during testimony are an enormous challenge for criminal trials. Exposure to post-event misinformation can lead to inadvertent creation of false memories, known as the misinformation effect. We investigated anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) during recall testing to enhance accurate recall while addressing the misinformation effect. Participants ( N  = 60) watched a television series depicting a fictional terrorist attack, then received an audio recording with misinformation, consistent information, and control information. During cued recall testing, participants received anodal or sham tDCS. Results revealed a robust misinformation effect in both groups, with participants falsely recalling on average 26.6% of the misinformed items. Bayesian statistics indicated substantial evidence in favour of the null hypothesis that there was no difference between groups in the misinformation effect. Regarding correct recall however, the anodal group exhibited significantly improved recall for items from the original video. Together, these results demonstrate that anodal tDCS of the left IPL enhances correct recall of the episodes from the original event without affecting false recall of misinformation. The findings support the IPL's role in recollection and source attribution of episodic memories.

People's names are challenging to learn at all ages. Because people somewhat know this, they might spontaneously use cost-efficient encoding strategies and devote more resources to learn names that are most likely to be useful. To test this hypothesis, we created a pseudo-incidental learning situation in which young and older participants were exposed to 12 characters from a TV show and reviewed face-name-instrument triplets. Characters' probability of appearance was specified via importance labels (main or secondary characters, bit parts). A surprised cued recall test showed that young adults performed better than older ones, and that semantic information was better recalled than names. Consistent with cost-efficient encoding strategies, participants in both groups recalled names and semantic information about most important characters better. Interestingly, there were large individual differences: people who reported using cost-efficient strategies performed better. At the individual level, memory advantages for most important characters' names and semantic information correlated.

The ability to stop unwanted memories from coming to mind is theorised to be essential for maintaining good mental health. People can employ intentional strategies to prevent conscious intrusions of negative memories, and repeated attempts to stop retrieval both reduces the frequency of intrusions and improves subsequent emotions elicited by those memories. However, it is still unknown whether memory control can improve negative emotions immediately, at the time control is attempted. It is also not clear which strategy is most beneficial for emotion regulation; clearing the mind of any thoughts of negative memories via direct suppression, or substituting memory recall with alternative thoughts. Here, we provide novel evidence that memory control immediately regulates negative emotions associated with autobiographical memories of morally wrong actions. Repeated control significantly improved negative emotions over time, regardless of the strategy used to implement control. Thought substitution involving either positive diversionary thinking or counterfactual thinking both induced positive feelings, whereas direct suppression neutralised emotions, regardless of whether memories were positive or negative. These empirical findings have implications for clinical practice as they indicate that memory control strategies could be effective emotion regulation methods for real-world intrusive memories.

After learning semantically related words, some people are more likely than others to incorrectly recall unstudied but semantically related lures (i.e., Deese-Roediger-McDermott [DRM] false recall). Previous studies have suggested that neural activity in subcortical regions (e.g., the caudate) is involved in false memory, and that there may be sex differences in the neural basis of false memory. However, sex-specific associations between subcortical volumes and false memory are not well understood. This study investigated whether sex modulates the associations between subcortical volumes and DRM false recall in 400 healthy college students. Volumes of subcortical regions including the caudate, accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen and thalamus were obtained from structural magnetic resonance images and measured using FreeSurfer. The results showed that males had lower true and false recall but larger subcortical volumes than females. Interestingly, higher false recall was associated with a larger caudate in males, but not in females. This association was significant after controlling for age and intracranial volume. This study provides new evidence on the neural basis of false recall. It suggests that the caudate plays a role in false recall in young men, and that future studies of the neural correlates of false memory should consider sex differences.

We experience the present as a continuous stream of information, but often experience the past in parcels of unique events or episodes. Decades of research have helped to articulate how we perform this event segmentation in the moment, as well as how events and their boundaries influence what we later remember. More recently, neuroscientific research has suggested that the hippocampus plays a role at critical moments during event formation alongside its established role in enabling subsequent recall. Here, we review and explore the relationship between event processing and recall with the perspective that it can be uniquely characterized by the contributions of the hippocampus and its interactions with the rest of the brain. Specifically, we highlight a growing number of empirical studies suggesting that the hippocampus is important for processing events that have just ended, bridging the gap between the prior and current event, and influencing the contents and trajectories of recalled information. We also catalogue and summarize the multifaceted sets of findings concerning how recall is influenced by event structure. Lastly, we discuss several exciting directions for future research and how our understanding of events might be enriched by characterizing them in terms of the operations of different regions of the brain., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

While recounting an experience, one can employ multiple strategies to transition from one part to the next. For instance, if the event was learned out of linear order, one can recall events according to the time they were learned (temporal), similar events (semantic), events occurring nearby in time (chronological), or events produced by the current event (causal). To disentangle the importance of these factors, we had participants watch the nonlinear narrative, Memento, under different task instructions and presentation orders. For each scene of the film, we also separately computed semantic and causal networks. We then contrasted the evidence for temporal, semantic, chronological, or causal strategies during recall. Critically, there was stronger evidence for the causal and chronological strategies than semantic or temporal strategies. Moreover, the causal and chronological strategies outperformed the temporal one even when we asked participants to recall the film in the presented order, underscoring the fundamental nature of causal structure in scaffolding understanding and organizing recall. Nevertheless, time still marginally predicted recall transitions, suggesting it operates as a weak signal in the presence of more salient forms of structure. In addition, semantic and causal network properties predicted scene memorability, including a stronger role for incoming causes to an event than its outgoing effects. In summary, these findings highlight the importance of accounting for complex, causal networks in knowledge building and memory., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

There is a growing body of evidence that higher-value information can be prioritised for both visual and auditory working memory. The present study examines whether valuable items can similarly be prioritised for the tactile domain. Employing an immediate serial recall procedure (ISR), participants reconstructed a 6-item tactile sequence by moving their fingers in the order of original stimulation. Participants were informed either that one serial position was worth notionally more points (prioritisation condition) or that all items were of equal value (control condition). For Experiment 1 ( N  = 48), significant boosts in correct recall were evident when serial positions 4 or 5 were more valuable (i.e., prioritisation effects). Experiment 2 ( N  = 24) demonstrated that the prioritisation effect persisted with concurrent articulation, suggesting that task performance was not a function of verbal recoding and rehearsal of the tactile information. Importantly, a significant recall cost for low-value (non-prioritised) items within the sequence was evident for both experiments. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (1) prioritisation effects transfer to the tactile domain and (2) finite attentional resources can be deliberately and strategically redistributed to specific items within a sequence, dependent upon the prevailing task demands., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Are employed Potential conflict—Prof. Sarah Bates who is an editor of the QJEP is the head of the department of Bournemouth University, where many of the contributors to this article. She is in charge of submitting our REF applications for the department.

There is growing evidence that false memories can occur in working memory (WM) tasks with only a few semantically related words and seconds between study and test. Abadie and Camos (2019) proposed a new model to explain the formation of false memories by describing the role of articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, the two main mechanisms for actively maintaining information in WM. However, this model has only been tested in recognition tasks. In the present study, we report four experiments testing the model in recall tasks in which the active maintenance of information in WM plays a more important role for retrieval. Short lists of semantically related items were held for a short retention interval filled with a concurrent task that either impaired or not the use of each of the WM maintenance mechanisms. Participants were asked to recall the items immediately after the concurrent task (immediate test) or later, at the end of a block of several trials (delayed test). In the immediate test, semantic errors were more frequent when WM maintenance was impaired. Specifically, rehearsal prevented the occurrence of semantic errors in the immediate test, while refreshing had no effect on their occurrence in this test, but increased semantic errors produced only in the delayed test. These results support Abadie and Camos (2019) model and go further by demonstrating the role of active information maintenance in WM in the emergence of false memories. The implications of these findings for understanding WM-LTM relationships are discussed., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each condition [(self-compassion: n  = 36, benefit-focused: n  = 39) or a control condition ( n  = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups ( p  < .001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood ( p  < .019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed.

Here we aimed to investigate the rate of forgetting of the familiarity and recollection components of recognition in patients at the onset of medial temporal lobe (MTL) pathology and destined to convert to Alzheimer's disease (AD). For this purpose, we conducted a longitudinal study of 13 patients who were diagnosed with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) at the first assessment and followed-up for 3 years. During this time, five patients converted to AD and eight remained in a stable condition of cognitive impairment. A group of 15 healthy subjects were enrolled as the control group (HC). In order to separately quantify the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory performance, the experimental sample was submitted to a modified version of Huppert and Piercy's procedure that included a Remember/Know paradigm. Data demonstrated that both stable and converter a-MCI patients forgot memory traces relative to the familiarity components of recognition at the same rate as HC. Conversely, converter a-MCI patients showed accelerated long-term forgetting specifically for the recollection component of recognition compared to stable a-MCI and HC. This is the first empirical demonstration that familiarity and recollection components of declarative memory are subject to different rates of forgetting in a-MCI patients as a function of their longitudinal clinical outcome. Our finding of accelerated long-term forgetting of the recollection component of recognition disclosed by converter a-MCI patients suggests that atrophy in the MTL not only interferes with the storage aspects but also disrupts the consolidation of memory traces.

ABSTRACT Schemas allow us to make assumptions about the world based upon previous experiences and aid in memory organisation and retrieval. However, a reliance on schemas may also result in increased false memories to schematically related lures. Prior neuroimaging work has linked schematic processing in memory tasks to activity in prefrontal, visual, and temporal regions. Yet, it is unclear what type of processing in these regions underlies memory errors. The current study examined where schematic lures exhibit greater neural similarity to schematic targets, leading to this memory error, as compared to neural overlap with non-schematic lures, which, like schematic lures, are novel items at retrieval. Results showed that patterns of neural activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, medial frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, hippocampus, and occipital cortices exhibited greater neural pattern similarity for schematic targets and schematic lures than between schematic lures and non-schematic lures. As such, results suggest that schematic membership, and not object history, may be more critical to the neural processes underlying memory retrieval in the context of a strong schema.

Study Objective: Nitrous oxide affects memory and recall. We aimed to determine if using nitrous oxide during labor affected patients' ability to learn and recall the risks and benefits of neuraxial analgesia., Design: Single-center, prospective cohort study., Setting: Labor and delivery unit in a large academic medical center., Patients: Nulliparous patients with spontaneous or planned induction of labor., Interventions: Parturients chose whether to use nitrous oxide during labor. At the discussion for epidural consent, 4 risks were described: headache, infection, nerve damage, bleeding., Measurements: Labor pain score, time from nitrous oxide discontinuation, and cervical dilation were documented at the discussion of epidural risks. Patients were assessed for unprompted recall and prompted recall of epidural risks on postpartum day 1 and unprompted recall at postpartum week 6. The number and proportion of patients who indicated each true risk (unprompted and prompted recall) or distractor (prompted recall only) were summarized by treatment group and results compared using Pearson χ 2 tests., Main Results: Of the 403 enrolled patients, 294 (73%) did not use nitrous oxide, and 109 (27%) did. The 2 groups were similar except women who used nitrous oxide were more likely to be cared for by midwives and had higher pain scores at their epidural request. Scores for unprompted or prompted recall of epidural risks were not different between women who received or did not receive nitrous oxide. All 4 risks were recalled unprompted by only 3% in the nitrous oxide group and by 6% in the group not receiving nitrous oxide (P = .18)., Conclusions: The use of nitrous oxide for labor analgesia does not adversely influence a parturient's ability to recall the risks of epidural placement. Patients who receive nitrous oxide for labor analgesia should be considered eligible to provide consent for subsequent procedures., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Subjective memory decline (SMD) might represent the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and has been reported in epileptic amnesia associated with accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF). We investigated ALF in SMD subjects by means of RAVLT recall and recognition and ROCF recall after 1-week retention and compared with a control group. Two-way ANOVAs for RAVLT and ROCF were conducted, and stepwise regression analysis was administered considering EMQ and DASS-21 as factors. SMD subjects performed significantly worse than controls at 1-week delay on RAVLT recall and recognition, but not on ROCF, and not associated with depression or memory complaints. SMD patients showed ALF, which is usually associated with temporomesial dysfunctions, representing a cognitive marker to assess objectively memory problems in SMD, and to undisclose initial neurodegenerative disease involving temporal structures usually compromised in AD. Therefore, SMD might no longer be "subjective," but rather a specific and defined clinical entity.

Prior work has shown Americans have higher levels of memory specificity than East Asians. Neuroimaging studies have not investigated mechanisms that account for cultural differences at retrieval. In this study, we use fMRI to assess whether mnemonic discrimination, distinguishing novel from previously encountered stimuli, accounts for cultural differences in memory. Fifty-five American and 55 Taiwanese young adults completed an object recognition paradigm testing discrimination of old targets, similar lures and novel foils. Mnemonic discrimination was tested by comparing discrimination of similar lures from studied targets, and results showed the relationship between activity in right fusiform gyrus and behavioural discrimination between target and lure objects differed across cultural groups. Parametric modulation analyses of activity during lure correct rejections also indicated that groups differed in left superior parietal cortex response to variations in lure similarity. Additional analyses of old vs. new activity indicated that Americans and Taiwanese differ in the neural activity supporting general object recognition in the hippocampus, left inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus. Results are juxtaposed against comparisons of the regions activated in common across the two cultures. Overall, Americans and Taiwanese differ in the extent to which they recruit visual processing and attention modulating brain regions.

Memory is notoriously fallible and susceptible to misinformation. Yet little is known about the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms that render individuals vulnerable to this type of false memory. The current experiments take an individual differences approach to examine whether susceptibility to misinformation reflects stable underlying factors related to memory retrieval. In Study 1, we report for the first time the existence of substantial individual variability in susceptibility to misinformation in the context of repeated memory retrieval, when the misinformation effect is most pronounced. This variability was not related to an individual's tendency to adopt an episodic retrieval style during remembering (trait mnemonics). In Study 2, we next examined whether susceptibility to misinformation is related to intrinsic functional connectivity in medial temporal lobe (MTL) networks known to coordinate memory reactivation during event retrieval. Stronger resting-state functional connectivity between the MTL and cortical areas associated with visual memory reactivation (occipital cortex) was associated with better protection from misinformation. Together, these results reveal that while memory distortion is a universal property of our reconstructive memory system, susceptibility to misinformation varies at the individual level and may depend on one's ability to reactivate visual details during memory retrieval.

Current research on memory indicates that learning is most effective when it involves spaced retrieval practice of study materials. Here, we investigated whether the benefits of both retrieval practice and spacing can be further boosted when variability is introduced across practice sessions. Across six experiments, participants learned translations of foreign vocabulary, with foreign words embedded in contextual sentences hinting at the meaning of these words. These sentences were then either kept constant or varied from one learning cycle to another. Whenever repeated practice took the form of retrieval from long-term memory with contextual sentences serving as cues (with or without feedback after retrieval attempts), variable sentences led to better learning of the meanings of the embedded foreign words than constant sentences. The benefits of variable retrieval were observed both immediately after study and after a 24-h delay, and they were larger when retrieval practice was spaced rather than massed. However, these benefits were not appreciated by the learners who judged learning to be more effective with constant rather than variable cues. This metacognitive illusion, misaligning the effectiveness of learning and its appraisal by learners, was confirmed in the seventh experiment which focused on learning lecture content. Thus, while spaced retrieval practice employing variable cues clearly produces robust benefits for memory performance, such benefits may be severely underappreciated by the learners., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Episodic memory relies on the entorhinal cortex (EC), a crucial hub connecting the hippocampus and sensory processing regions. This study investigates the role of the lateral EC (LEC) in episodic-like memory in mice. Here, we employ the object-place-context-recognition task (OPCRT), a behavioral test used to study episodic-like memory in rodents. Electrophysiology in brain slices reveals that OPCRT specifically induces a shift in the threshold for the induction of synaptic plasticity in LEC superficial layer II. Additionally, a dual viral system is used to express chemogenetic receptors coupled to the c-Fos promoter in neurons recruited during the learning. We demonstrate that the inhibition of LEC neurons impairs the performance of the mice in the memory task, while their stimulation significantly facilitates memory recall. Our findings provide evidence for an episodic-like memory engram in the LEC and emphasize its role in memory processing within the broader network of episodic memory., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

It is a common belief that memories, over time, become progressively independent of the hippocampus and are gradually stored in cortical areas. This view is mainly based on evidence showing that prefrontal cortex (PFC) manipulations impair the retrieval of remote memories, while hippocampal inhibition does not. More controversial is whether activity in the medial PFC is required immediately after learning to initiate consolidation. Another question concerns functional differences among PFC subregions in forming and storing remote memories. To address these issues, we directly contrasted the effects of loss-of-function manipulations of the anterior cingulate cortex (aCC) and the ventromedial PFC, which includes the infralimbic (IL) and prelimbic (PL) cortices, before testing and immediately after training on the ability of CD1 mice to recall the hidden platform location in the Morris water maze. We injected an AAV carrying the hM4Di receptor into the PL-IL or aCC. Interestingly, pretest administrations of clozapine-N-oxide (CNO; 3 mg/kg) revealed that the aCC, but not the PL-IL, was necessary to recall remote spatial information. Furthermore, systemic post-training administration of CNO impaired memory recall at remote, but not recent, time points in both groups. These findings revealed a functional dissociation between the two prefrontal areas, demonstrating that both the PL-IL and the aCC are involved in early consolidation of remote spatial memories, but only the aCC is engaged in their recall., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 Centofante et al.)

Different cortical systems to the hippocampus were activated using fMRI during different types of episodic memory task. For object with scene location episodic memory, the activations were high in cortical systems involved in spatial processing, including the ventromedial visual and medial parahippocampal system. These activations for the medial parahippocampal system were higher in the right hemisphere. The activations in the face and object processing ventrolateral visual cortical stream regions FFC, PIT, V8 and TE2p were higher in the object-location in scene task than the reward-location task, and were higher in the right hemisphere. For reward-location in scene episodic memory, activations were also high in the ventromedial visual cortical spatial stream to the hippocampus, but were also selectively high in storage in key reward cortical regions (ventromedial prefrontal 10r, 10v, 10d; pregenual anterior cingulate d32, p24, p32, s32; and medial orbitofrontal cortex reward-related pOFC, 11l, OFC). For word-pair episodic memory, activations were lower in the ventromedial visual and medial parahippocampal spatial cortical stream, and were higher in language-related regions in Broca's area (44, 45, 47l), and were higher in the left hemisphere for these regions and for the many highly connected inferior frontal gyrus regions in the left hemisphere. Further, effective connectivity analyses during the episodic memory tasks showed that the direction of connectivity for these systems was from early visual cortical regions V2-V4 to the ventromedial visual cortical regions VMV1-3 and VVC for spatial scene processing; was from the pregenual anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex reward systems to the hippocampal system; and was from the FFC/V8/PIT system to TE2p in the visual inferior temporal visual cortex, which has connectivity to lateral parahippocampal TF, which in turn has forward effective connectivity to the hippocampus., (© 2024 The Author(s). Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This study investigates the cognitive impacts of video game immersion and task interference on immediate and delayed recall as well as recognition tasks. We enrolled 160 subjects aged 18 to 29, who were regular players of "shoot-em-up" video games for at least 3 years. Participants were assigned to one of three experimental groups or a control group. The experimental conditions varied in the timing and type of tasks: the first group performed a video game session between recall tasks, the second group multitasked with video games and recall tasks simultaneously, and the third group engaged in task switching from video games to recall tasks. Using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, we measured the effects of these conditions on cognitive performance, focusing on error types and recall accuracy. Results indicated that multitasking and task switching significantly affected the subjects' performance, with notable decrements in recall and recognition accuracy in conditions of high task interference. The study highlights the cognitive costs associated with multitasking in immersive digital games and provides insights into how task similarity and interference might increase error rates and affect memory performance., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© 2024 Mancone et al.)

Benefits of self-testing for learning have been consistently shown for simple materials such as word lists learned by rote memorization. Considerably less evidence for such benefits exists for complex, more educationally relevant materials and its application to new situations. The present study explores the mechanisms underlying this transfer. To this end, a typical retrieval-practice-effect paradigm was applied to foster the learning of an artificial language. Participants either repeatedly studied grammatically correct exemplar sentences of the artificial language or engaged in a cloze test as the interim test after learning. To assess far transfer, participants in both groups of restudy and retrieval practice engaged in a grammaticality judgment test after a delay of 5 min and 1 week. In addition, participants in both groups completed a final memory test (i.e., a cloze test identical to the initial test) 1 week after learning. In addition to a long-term memory benefit of retrieval practice, results revealed also a retrieval-practice benefit in the far-transfer test after the 1-week delay. The findings further support the view that far transfer is supported by learning the underlying grammatical rules as opposed to memorizing the material. Thus, retrieval practice is also effective for fostering learning of complex materials and, even more importantly, for promoting transfer of learning-a crucial goal in modern educational practices., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Purpose: Greater recognition of the impact of hearing loss on cognitive functions has led speech/hearing clinics to focus more on auditory memory outcomes. Typically evaluated by scoring participants' recall on a list of unrelated words after they have heard the list read out loud, this method implies pitch and timing variations across words. Here, we questioned whether these variations could impact performance differentially in one language or another., Method: In a series of online studies evaluating auditory short-term memory in normally hearing adults, we examined how pitch patterns (Experiment 1), timing patterns (Experiment 2), and interactions between the two (Experiment 3) affected free recall of words, cued recall of forgotten words, and mental demand. Note that visual memory was never directly tested; written words were only used after auditory encoding in the cued recall part. Studies were administered in both French and English, always conducted with native listeners., Result: Confirming prior work, grouping mechanisms facilitated free recall, but not cued recall (the latter being only affected by longer presentation time) or ratings of mental demand. Critically, grouping by pitch provided more benefit for French than for English listeners, while grouping by time was equally beneficial in both languages., Conclusion: Pitch is more useful to French- than to English-speaking listeners for encoding spoken words in short-term memory, perhaps due to the syllable-based versus stress-based rhythms inherent to each language., Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27048328.

Objective: This study examined the potential of simple animations with a low level of detail and their impact on patient's ability to recall information. Also, we examined how the patients' digital health literacy influenced the association. Methods: Over 900 Danish adults were continuously included in this experimental study, and they were allocated to either an animation with a low or high level of detail. Participants answered questionnaires about demographics, digital health literacy, and the ability to recall information. The association between level of detail and information recall was examined by OR (95% CI). Results: The results showed no association between the level of detail and information recall. Conclusion: This novel study supports the potential of simple animations, and future research could advantageously investigate animations with more significant differences in level of detail. The results should be cautiously interpreted, as selection and information problems may have caused bias., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Objective: The pathophysiology behind memory impairment in Parkinson's Disease Mild Cognitive Impairment (PD-MCI) is unclear. This study aims to investigate the hippocampal and cortical atrophy patterns in PD-MCI patients with different types of memory impairments, categorized as Retrieval Failure (RF) and Encoding Failure (EF)., Methods: The study included 16 healthy controls (HC) and 34 PD-MCI patients, divided into RF (N = 18) and EF (N = 16) groups based on their Verbal Memory Processes Test (VMPT) scores, including spontaneous recall, recognition, and Index of Sensitivity to Cueing (ISC). Hippocampal subfields and cortical thicknesses were measured using the FreeSurfer software for automatic segmentation., Results: Compared to the HC group, the EF group exhibited significant atrophy in the left lateral occipital region and the right caudal middle frontal, superior temporal, and inferior temporal regions (p⟨0.05). The RF group displayed significant atrophy in the left lateral occipital, middle temporal, and precentral regions, as well as the right pars orbitalis and superior frontal regions (p⟨0.05). Hippocampal subfield analysis revealed distinct volume differences between HC-EF and RF-EF groups, with significant reductions in the CA1, CA3, and CA4 subregions in the EF group, but no differences between HC and RF groups (p > 0.05)., Conclusion: Gray matter atrophy patterns differ in PD-MCI patients with encoding and retrieval memory impairments. The significant hippocampal atrophy in the EF group, particularly in the CA subregions, highlights its potential role in disease progression and memory decline. Additionally, the convergence of atrophy in the lateral occipital cortex across both RF and EF groups suggests the involvement of the Parietal Memory Network (PMN) in PD-related memory impairment., (© 2024 The Author(s). CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The fading affect bias (FAB) is the faster fading of unpleasant affect than pleasant affect for autobiographical event memories, and it is considered a healthy coping mechanism because it is positively related to healthy measures (e.g., self-esteem and positive PANAS), whereas it is negatively related to unhealthy measures (e.g., psychological distress and negative PANAS). Some researchers suggest that Deese-Roediger McDermott (DRM) critical lure false memories for words are conceptually equivalent to false memories for autobiographical event memories, which has not been examined. Based on the finding that false autobiographical event memories negatively predict FAB, the current study tested if false DRM word memories would negatively predict FAB for autobiographical event memories, which would demonstrate support for the conceptual equivalence of DRM memories and autobiographical event memories. We found that three measures of false word recall positively predicted FAB, which is a result that is contrary to prior findings and the contention that DRM false memories for words are conceptually the same as autobiographical event memories., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In this study, we assessed the efficacy of various linear and chaotic physiological synchrony methods during collaborative emotive recall of stories, examining how physiological synchronization impacts dyadic interaction in tasks involving emotionally charged narratives. Eighty-two young individuals, forming 41dyads, participated in a task requiring the recall of stories with varying emotional content. We analyzed physiological data using the Lyapunov coefficient, cross-correlation, and coherence indices. Our statistical approach included concise applications of the student's t-test, Pearson's correlation, and notably, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The results highlighted significant differences in physiological synchrony between emotional and less emotional situations, revealing increased synchronization in collaborative remembering of emotional stories. The integration of the Lyapunov coefficient with other indices was crucial for identifying emotional conditions, underscoring its significance in exploring emotional engagement in group memory activities. This study provides valuable insights into the dynamics of physiological synchrony in emotional interactions, its implications in cognitive and social domains, and suggests potential applications in understanding collective behavior and emotional processing.

Background: Balance, Eye, Face, Arm, Speech, Time (BE FAST) was proposed to increase the public's ability to recognize more signs of stroke by adding balance (B) and eyesight changes (E) to the stroke acronym FAST (Face, Arm, Speech, Time). Previous prospective studies suggested these additions did not result in increased stroke detection., Methods and Results: A randomized, assessor blinded prospective pilot study assessed retention of BE FAST and FAST. The 174 participants were randomized to 1 of 2 education arms, educated similarly visually and auditorily, and retention was tested at 3 time points. Mnemonic recall was similar at 30 days (79.5% versus 69.8%, P =0.104). Significantly lower retention was seen in the BE FAST group's ability to recall all symptoms at 3 to 5 minutes (75% versus 30.2%, P <0.001), 60 minutes (70.5% versus 41.9%, P <0.001), and 30 days (51.1% versus 24.4%, P <0.001). Significantly higher retention was observed in the FAST group for partial recall at 3 to 5 minutes (94.3% versus 84.9%, P =0.041), 60 minutes (86.4% versus 77.9%, P =0.045), and 30 days (76.1% versus 59.3%, P =0.012). For BE FAST, retention of more common symptoms at 30 days was lower for face (78.4% versus 60.5%, P =0.010), speech (65.9% versus 47.7%, P =0.015), and arm (63.6% versus 52.3%, P =0.131)., Conclusion: Significantly higher retention and ability to recall stroke symptoms, fully or partially, was found with FAST. Adding B and E to FAST resulted in lower retention of more common symptoms., Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT06152016.

Introduction: Word-list recall tests are routinely used for cognitive assessment, and process scoring may improve their accuracy. We examined whether Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog) derived, process-based digital cognitive biomarkers (DCBs) at baseline predicted Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) longitudinally and compared them to standard metrics., Methods: Analyses were performed with Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) data from 330 participants (mean age = 71.4 ± 7.2). We conducted regression analyses predicting CDR at 36 months, controlling for demographics and genetic risk, with ADAS-Cog traditional scores and DCBs as predictors., Results: The best predictor of CDR at 36 months was M, a DCB reflecting recall ability (area under the curve = 0.84), outperforming traditional scores. Diagnostic results suggest that M may be particularly useful to identify individuals who are unlikely to decline., Discussion: These results suggest that M outperforms ADAS-Cog traditional metrics and supports process scoring for word-list recall tests. More research is needed to determine further applicability with other tests and populations., Highlights: Process scoring and latent modeling were more effective than traditional scoring. Latent recall ability (M) was the best predictor of Clinical Dementia Rating decline at 36 months. The top digital cognitive biomarker model had odds ≈ 90 times greater than the top Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale model. Particularly high negative predictive value supports literature on cognitive testing as a useful screen. Consideration of both cognitive and pathological outcomes is needed., (© 2024 The Author(s). Alzheimer's & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.)

When presented with a lineup, the witness is tasked with identifying the culprit or indicating that the culprit is not present. The witness then qualifies the decision with a confidence judgment. But how do witnesses go about making these decisions and judgments? According to absolute-judgment models, witnesses determine which lineup member provides the strongest match to memory and base their identification decision and confidence judgment on the absolute strength of this MAX lineup member. Conversely, relative-judgment models propose that witnesses determine which lineup member provides the strongest match to memory and then base their identification decision and confidence judgment on the relative strength of the MAX lineup member compared to the remaining lineup members. We took a critical test approach to test the predictions of both models. As predicted by the absolute-judgment model, but contrary to the predictions of the relative-judgment model, witnesses were more likely to correctly reject low-similarity lineups than high-similarity lineups (Experiment 1), and more likely to reject biased lineups than fair lineups (Experiment 2). Likewise, witnesses rejected low-similarity lineups with greater confidence than high-similarity lineups (Experiment 1) and rejected biased lineups with greater confidence than fair lineups (Experiment 2). Only a single pattern was consistent with the relative model and inconsistent with the absolute model: suspect identifications from biased lineups were made with greater confidence than suspect identifications from fair lineups (Experiment 2). The results suggest that absolute-judgment models better predict witness decision-making than do relative-judgment models and that pure relative-judgment models are unviable., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Given the large amount of information that people process daily, it is important to understand memory for the truth and falsity of information. The most prominent theoretical models in this regard are the Cartesian model and the Spinozan model. The former assumes that both "true" and "false" tags may be added to the memory representation of encoded information; the latter assumes that only falsity is tagged. In the present work, we contrasted these two models with an expectation-violation model hypothesizing that truth or falsity tags are assigned when expectations about truth or falsity must be revised in light of new information. An interesting implication of the expectation-violation model is that a context with predominantly false information leads to the tagging of truth whereas a context with predominantly true information leads to the tagging of falsity. To test the three theoretical models against each other, veracity expectations were manipulated between participants by varying the base rates of allegedly true and false advertising claims. Memory for the veracity of these claims was assessed using a model-based analysis. To increase methodological rigor and transparency in the specification of the measurement model, we preregistered, a priori, the details of the model-based analysis test. Despite a large sample size (N = 208), memory for truth and falsity did not differ, regardless of the base rates of true and false claims. The results thus support the Cartesian model and provide evidence against the Spinozan model and the expectation-violation model., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

How does our environment impact what we will later remember? Early work in real-world environments suggested that having matching encoding/retrieval contexts improves memory. However, some laboratory-based studies have not replicated this advantageous context-dependent memory effect. Using virtual reality methods, we find support for context-dependent memory effects and examine an influence of memory schema and dynamic environments. Participants (N = 240) remembered more objects when in the same virtual environment (context) as during encoding. This traded-off with falsely "recognizing" more similar lures. Experimentally manipulating the virtual objects and environments revealed that a congruent object/environment schema aids recall (but not recognition), though a dynamic background does not. These findings further our understanding of when and how context affects our memory through a naturalistic approach to studying such effects., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

While many theories assume that sleep is critical in stabilizing and strengthening memories, our recent behavioral study (Liu & Ranganath, 2021, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28[6], 2035-2044) suggests that sleep does not simply stabilize memories. Instead, it plays a more complex role, integrating information across two temporally distinct learning episodes. In the current study, we simulated the results of Liu and Ranganath (2021) using our biologically plausible computational model, TEACH, developed based on the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework. Our model suggests that when memories are activated during sleep, the reduced influence of temporal context establishes connections across temporally separated events through mutual training between the hippocampus and neocortex. In addition to providing a compelling mechanistic explanation for the selective effect of sleep, this model offers new examples of the diverse ways in which the cortex and hippocampus can interact during learning., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objectives: Smoking is an important modifiable risk factor in all vascular diseases and verbal advice from providers has been shown to increase rates of tobacco cessation. We sought to identify factors that will improve tobacco cessation and recall of receiving verbal cessation advice in vascular surgery patients at a single institution., Methods: The study is a retrospective cohort study. Patients seen in outpatient vascular surgery clinic who triggered a tobacco Best Practice Advisory (BPA) during their office visits over a 10-month period were contacted post-clinic and administered surveys detailing smoking status, cessation advice recall, and validated scales for nicotine dependence and willingness to quit smoking. This BPA is a "hard stop" that requires providers to document actions taken. Charts were reviewed for tobacco cessation documentation. Nine-digit zip-codes identified the area deprivation index, a measure of socioeconomic status. Univariate analysis was used to identify factors associated with cessation and advice recall., Results: One hundred out of 318 (31.4%) patients responded to the survey. Epic Slicer Dicer found 97 BPA responses. To dismiss the BPA, 89 providers (91.8%) selected "advised tobacco cessation" and "Unable to Advise" otherwise. Of the 318 patients, 115 (36.1%) had cessation intervention documented in their provider notes and 151 (47.5%) received written tobacco cessation advice. Of survey respondents, 70 recalled receiving verbal advice, 27 recalled receiving written advice, 28 reported receiving offers of medication/therapy for cessation. 55 patients reported having tobacco cessation plans, and among those 17 reported having quit tobacco. Recall of receiving written advice (P < .001) and recall of receiving medication/therapy (P = .008) were associated with recall of receiving verbal cessation advice., Conclusions: Providing patients with tobacco cessation medication/therapy and written tobacco cessation education during office visits is associated with increased patients' recall of tobacco cessation advice. Vascular surgeons should continue to provide directed tobacco cessation advice., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Music is a powerful medium that influences our emotions and memories. Neuroscience research has demonstrated music's ability to engage brain regions associated with emotion, reward, motivation, and autobiographical memory. While music's role in modulating emotions has been explored extensively, our study investigates whether music can alter the emotional content of memories. Building on the theory that memories can be updated upon retrieval, we tested whether introducing emotional music during memory recollection might introduce false emotional elements into the original memory trace. We developed a 3-day episodic memory task with separate encoding, recollection, and retrieval phases. Our primary hypothesis was that emotional music played during memory recollection would increase the likelihood of introducing novel emotional components into the original memory. Behavioral findings revealed two key outcomes: 1) participants exposed to music during memory recollection were more likely to incorporate novel emotional components congruent with the paired music valence, and 2) memories retrieved 1 day later exhibited a stronger emotional tone than the original memory, congruent with the valence of the music paired during the previous day's recollection. Furthermore, fMRI results revealed altered neural engagement during story recollection with music, including the amygdala, anterior hippocampus, and inferior parietal lobule. Enhanced connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions, including the frontal and visual cortex, was observed during recollection with music, potentially contributing to more emotionally charged story reconstructions. These findings illuminate the interplay between music, emotion, and memory, offering insights into the consequences of infusing emotional music into memory recollection processes., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by autobiographical memory deficits, with the ability to retrieve episodic-rich memories being particularly affected. Here, we investigated the influence of AD on a specific subtype of episodic memories known as flashbulb memories (i.e., the ability to remember the personal circumstances for the reception of important news events). We examined the frequency, characteristics, and the temporal distribution of flashbulb memories across the life span. To this aim, 28 older adults diagnosed with AD and a matched sample of 29 healthy older controls were probed for flashbulb memories for two historical events from each decade of their lives. They also estimated the subjective degree of reexperiencing for the memories reported. AD participants showed impaired access to flashbulb memories, the frequency of reported memories being lower than for healthy older adults. However, qualitative aspects of AD participants' flashbulb memories were quite similar to those of the controls, as no group differences were obtained with respect to the canonical categories or degree of reexperience. AD participants' flashbulb memories clustered during the early years of their life, consistent with a reminiscence bump, whereas healthy controls also reported memories dated to later lifetime periods. Our results suggest that probing for personal memories of important public events may serve as a powerful cue for detailed episodic memories in AD., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Theta oscillations support memory formation, but their exact contribution to the communication between prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the hippocampus is unknown. We tested the functional relevance of theta oscillations as a communication link between both areas for memory formation using transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). Healthy, young participants learned two lists of Dutch-German word pairs and retrieved them immediately and with a 30-min delay. In the encoding group (N = 30), tACS was applied during the encoding of list 1. List 2 was used to test stimulation aftereffects. In the retrieval group (N = 23), we stimulated during the delayed recall. In both groups, we applied tACS bilaterally at prefrontal and tempo-parietal sites, using either individualized theta frequency or 15 Hz (as control), according to a within-subject design. Stimulation with theta-tACS did not alter overall learning performance. An exploratory analysis revealed that immediate recall improved when word-pairs were learned after theta-tACS (list 2). Applying theta-tACS during retrieval had detrimental effects on memory. No changes in the power of the respective frequency bands were observed. Our results do not support the notion that impacting the communication between PFC and the hippocampus during a task by bilateral tACS improves memory. However, we do find evidence that direct stimulation had a trend for negatively interfering effects during immediate and delayed recall. Hints for beneficial effects on memory only occurred with aftereffects of the stimulation. Future studies need to further examine the effects during and after stimulation on memory formation., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Several recent fMRI studies of episodic and working memory representations converge on the finding that visual information is most strongly represented in occipito-temporal cortex during the encoding phase but in parietal regions during the retrieval phase. It has been suggested that this location shift reflects a change in the content of representations, from predominantly visual during encoding to primarily semantic during retrieval. Yet, direct evidence on the nature of encoding and retrieval representations is lacking. It is also unclear how the representations mediating the encoding-retrieval shift contribute to memory performance. To investigate these two issues, in the current fMRI study, participants encoded pictures (e.g., picture of a cardinal) and later performed a word recognition test (e.g., word "cardinal"). Representational similarity analyses examined how visual (e.g., red color) and semantic representations (e.g., what cardinals eat) support successful encoding and retrieval. These analyses revealed two novel findings. First, successful memory was associated with representational changes in cortical location (from occipito-temporal at encoding to parietal at retrieval) but not with changes in representational content (visual vs. semantic). Thus, the representational encoding-retrieval shift cannot be easily attributed to a change in the nature of representations. Second, in parietal regions, stronger representations predicted encoding failure but retrieval success. This encoding-retrieval "flip" in representations mimics the one previously reported in univariate activation studies. In summary, by answering important questions regarding the content and contributions to the performance of the representations mediating the encoding-retrieval shift, our findings clarify the neural mechanisms of this intriguing phenomenon., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.)