Testing alters brain activity during subsequent restudy: Evidence for test-potentiated encoding

Neurocognitive mechanisms of the “testing effect”: A review

“…A second explanation is that the testing context is reactivated during TPE when learners are reminded of prior testing during the encoding opportunity. This could enrich the memory representation and create additional retrieval cues when the different testing contexts become integrated [24,25].…”

“…Three other studies investigated the consequences of practice-testing by measuring changes in brain activation after practice, or related brain activation during practice-testing to results on a subsequent final test [30][31][32]. Two studies focused at TPE [24,25]. One study [33] analyzed brain activations during restudying directly following practice-testing, and measured brain activation patterns during interleaved restudying and practice-testing.…”

“…Three fMRI experiments [24,25,33] addressed TPE. In two experiments [24,25], participants encoded word-pairs and practiced the word-pairs between encoding episodes by practice-testing or restudying (see Fig.…”

“…Vestergren and Nyberg [25] specifically addressed this idea by comparing brain activity during the encoding of previously unsuccessfully tested items to successfully tested and restudied items. In their study, no differences in brain activity were found that were specific to re-encoding of unsuccessfully tested items, although several areas were more activated overall after practicetesting than restudying.…”

“…Both Liu et al [33] and Vestergren and Nyberg [25] investigated which brain activations correlated with encoding success during TPE of previously unsuccessfully tested items. Liu et al found that the left putamen and the caudate, the left hippocampus and the left PFC were more active during restudying of previously unsuccessfully tested items when these items were subsequently remembered than when they were not remembered.…”