RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Briefly Cuing Memories Leads to Suppression of Their Neural Representations
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 8010
OP 8020
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4584-13.2014
VO 34
IS 23
A1 Jordan Poppenk
A1 Kenneth A. Norman
YR 2014
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/23/8010.abstract
AB Previous studies have linked partial memory activation with impaired subsequent memory retrieval (e.g., Detre et al., 2013) but have not provided an account of this phenomenon at the level of memory representations: How does partial activation change the neural pattern subsequently elicited when the memory is cued? To address this question, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment in which participants studied word-scene paired associates. Later, we weakly reactivated some memories by briefly presenting the cue word during a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task; other memories were more strongly reactivated or not reactivated at all. We tested participants' memory for the paired associates before and after RSVP. Cues that were briefly presented during RSVP triggered reduced levels of scene activity on the post-RSVP memory test, relative to the other conditions. We used pattern similarity analysis to assess how representations changed as a function of the RSVP manipulation. For briefly cued pairs, we found that neural patterns elicited by the same cue on the pre- and post-RSVP tests (preA–postA; preB–postB) were less similar than neural patterns elicited by different cues (preA–postB; preB–postA). These similarity reductions were predicted by neural measures of memory activation during RSVP. Through simulation, we show that our pattern similarity results are consistent with a model in which partial memory activation triggers selective weakening of the strongest parts of the memory.