Modes of memory: Early electrophysiological markers of repetition suppression and recognition enhancement predict behavioral performance

Abstract

Different forms of perceptual memory have opposite physiological effects. Whereas repetition priming often leads to suppression of brain responses, explicit recognition has been found to enhance brain activity. We investigated effects of repetition priming and recognition memory on early gamma-band responses. In a study phase, participants performed a visual discrimination task with task-irrelevant item repetitions. Stimulus repetition suppressed early evoked gamma responses in participants with strong behavioral repetition effects. In a test phase, participants discriminated old from new items. Evoked and induced gamma activity was enhanced for old items. Effects were stronger in participants with better recognition performance. The results demonstrate a modulation of earliest stages of visual information processing by different memory systems, which is dependent on retrieval intention and predicts individual behavioral performance.

Human gamma-band activity: A review on cognitive and behavioral correlates and network models

“…Among the first cognitive functions that were found to be reflected by human GBRs was attention (Tiitinen et al, 1993). Subsequently, many further cognitive functions were shown to modulate human gamma activity, among them object representations (Tallon-Baudry et al, 1996;Bertrand and Tallon-Baudry, 2000), memory processes (Bas¸ar et al, 2000;Kaiser and Lutzenberger, 2005;Jensen et al, 2007;Sederberg et al, 2007;Axmacher et al, 2007;Busch et al, 2008), language processes (Pulvermü ller et al, 1996;Eulitz et al, 1996;Crone et al, 2001;Bastiaansen and Hagoort, 2006), and visual awareness (Ohla et al, 2007;Schurger et al, 2006) to name just a few. Thus one might ask whether these oscillations are modulated by almost any cognitive process or whether there is a logical concept underlying these modulations.…”

“…Subsequently remembered stimuli were characterized by enhanced induced GBR during encoding in occipital areas. As a between-subject-approach, Busch et al (2008) compared good performers with bad performers. After an initial study phase, during which participants were asked to perform a visual discrimination task of abstract line drawings, subjects had to judge items being old or new in a subsequent test phase.…”

Human gamma-band activity and behavior

“…Busch et al (2008) combined a repetition priming paradigm with a subsequent recognition memory task using abstract line drawings as stimulus material. During the encoding phase, evoked gamma repetition suppression was found at posterior EEG electrodes.…”

Gamma in motion: Pattern reversal elicits stronger gamma-band responses than motion

“…There is accumulating evidence that gammaband oscillations play a key role in fundamental brain functions including visual feature binding (Singer and Gray, 1995;Eckhorn, 1999;Gray, 1999;Herrmann et al, 1999), visual awareness (Ohla et al, 2007), memory (Herrmann et al, 2004a;Gruber and Müller, 2005;Busch et al, 2008), attention (Gruber et al, 1999;Tallon-Baudry et al, 2005), and learning (Miltner et al, 1999).…”