Factors influencing memory encoding and retrieval

心理学家和神经科学家一直在努力确定对成功的记忆表现至关重要的认知操作。我的研究项目的长期目标是确定编码和检索操作之间的共性和差异，并确定它们如何在认知和神经层面上相互作用，从而影响我们记忆过去的能力。本研究的第一部分将研究个体和实验诱发的记忆信息表征差异是否会影响成功的检索。我们很可能会使用不同的语言或空间代码来表示不同类型的信息。分散注意力技术——在主要记忆任务的同时执行一项分散注意力的任务——将被用来探测这些记忆表征。神经成像研究表明，在记忆测试中，不同的大脑区域和区域网络专门用于表示和获取不同类型的信息。拟议中的研究将使用认知实验和功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来识别与记忆有关的大脑区域和网络。从过去检索信息的成功程度是衡量记忆状态的一个指标，而记忆的质量则是另一个指标。该基金的第二部分将考虑不同的编码条件如何影响形成和随后检索的记忆痕迹的质量，然后将开发一个表征这些质量不同类型记忆的神经模型。fMRI将用于识别记忆所需的神经区域，并确定与编码有关的大脑区域的感觉特异性再激活是否有助于成功的记忆。识别和理解影响编码和检索的变量是这项资助的重点，并且由于许多原因很重要。首先，它强调了记忆表现可能被破坏的条件和情况，提供了对人类认知处理在认知和神经层面上的局限性的见解。其次，这项研究将确定影响存储在记忆中的编码操作，以及最终可以从过去检索到的内容。

Identifying cognitive operations critical for successful memory performance has been an on-going effort of psychologists and neuroscientists. The long-term goal of my research program is to identify commonalities and differences between encoding and retrieval operations, and to determine how they interact, at both the cognitive and the neural level, to influence our ability to remember the past. Part 1 of this grant will examine whether individual, and experimenter-induced, differences in representing information in memory influence successful retrieval. It is likely that we can use different codes, verbal or spatial, to represent different types of information. The divided attention technique - performing a distracting task at the same time as the primary memory task - will be used to probe these memory representations. Neuroimaging studies suggest that distinct brain areas, and networks of regions, are specialized for representing and accessing different kinds of information during a memory test. The proposed research will use cognitive experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain regions, and networks, implicated in memory. While success at retrieving information from the past is one measure indexing memory status, the quality of one's memory is another. Part 2 of this grant will consider how different encoding conditions influence the quality of memory trace that is formed and subsequently retrieved, and will then develop a neural model characterizing these qualitatively different types of memories. fMRI will be used to identify the neural regions needed for recollection, and to determine whether sensory-specific reactivation of brain regions implicated at encoding contributes to successful recollection. Identifying and understanding variables which influence encoding and retrieval is the focus of this grant, and is important for a number of reasons. First, it highlights conditions and situations in which memory performance can be disrupted, providing insight into the limitations, at both the cognitive and the neural level of human cognitive processing. Second, this research will identify encoding operations that influence what is stored in memory, and what can ultimately be retrieved from the past.