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The Journal of Neuroscience, January 18, 2006, 26(3):926-933; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3931-05.2006

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Fluent Conceptual Processing and Explicit Memory for Faces Are Electrophysiologically Distinct

Joel L. Voss and Ken A. Paller

Institute for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208-2710

Implicit memory and explicit memory are fundamentally different manifestations of memory storage in the brain. Yet, conceptual fluency driven by previous experience could theoretically be responsible for both conceptual implicit memory and aspects of explicit memory. For example, contemplating the meaning of a word might serve to speed subsequent processing of that word and also make it seem familiar. We examined electrophysiological correlates of conceptual priming with 180 celebrity faces to determine whether or not they resemble electrophysiological correlates of explicit memory. Celebrity faces are ideal for this purpose because they carry with them preexisting conceptual information (i.e., biographical facts) that can selectively be brought to mind such that conceptual processing can be manipulated systematically. In our experiment, exposure to biographical information associated with only one-half of the celebrities yielded conceptual priming for those faces, whereas all faces were perceptually primed. Conceptual priming was indexed by positive brain potentials over frontal regions from 250 to 500 ms. Explicit memory retrieval was associated with later brain potentials over posterior regions that were strikingly similar to potentials previously associated with pure familiarity for faces (when a face seems familiar in the absence of retrieval of any specific information about previous occurrence). Furthermore, the magnitude of conceptual priming was correlated across subjects with the amplitude of frontal but not posterior potentials, whereas the opposite was true for explicit memory. Distinct brain processes were thus associated with conceptual priming and conscious recognition of faces, thus providing a sharper focus on the border between implicit and explicit memory.

Key words: conceptual priming; face memory; familiarity; event-related potentials; ERPs; episodic memory

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Received Sep 17, 2005; revised November 20, 2005; accepted December 2, 2005.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				E. A. Race, D. Badre, and A. D. Wagner Multiple Forms of Learning Yield Temporally Distinct Electrophysiological Repetition Effects Cereb Cortex, November 13, 2009; (2009) bhp233v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. L. Voss, P. J. Reber, M.-M. Mesulam, T. B. Parrish, and K. A. Paller Familiarity and Conceptual Priming Engage Distinct Cortical Networks Cereb Cortex, July 1, 2008; 18(7): 1712 - 1719. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. L. Voss and K. A. Paller Neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory and their contamination of putative neural correlates of explicit memory Learn. Mem., April 5, 2007; 14(4): 259 - 267. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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