Alleviating memory impairment through distraction
-
1
Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, University College of London, UK., United Kingdom
Distracting information typically interferes with memory for recent events. This negative effect upon memory retention is heightened with higher memory load and patients with existing memory impairment are particularly vulnerable to distractor interference. In contrast, using a delayed match-to-sample (DMS) task with photographs of natural scenes, we establish a beneficial effect for distractor presentation. Short-term memory recognition was significantly improved with the presentation of a distractor face during the delay for both patients with memory impairment due to bilateral hippocampal lesions and healthy adults with low memory performance. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings in the theta frequency range (4-8 Hz) as an indicator of active maintenance (i.e. rehearsal), we show that healthy controls display enhanced bi-frontal synchrony throughout the delay period for the high-load compared to the low-load DMS conditions. A performance-based median split revealed that this synchrony pattern was robust in the low but not the high performing individuals. These MEG results suggest that ongoing rehearsal is associated with low levels of performance when memory load is high. Furthermore, theta synchrony in low performers was markedly reduced immediately following distractor presentation suggesting that distractor presentation disrupted ongoing rehearsal. In contrast, distractors had no effect on theta synchrony in the high performance group. Our results suggest that under conditions where active memory rehearsal reduces memory performance, distraction can improve memory.
Keywords:
MEG,
memory and learning
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Memory and Learning
Citation:
Cashdollar
N,
Lavie
N and
Duzel
E
(2011). Alleviating memory impairment through distraction.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00210
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
21 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Nathan Cashdollar, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, University College of London, UK., London, United Kingdom, nate.cashdollar@gmail.com