Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Sociology-of-Memory--Papers-from-the-Spectrum1-4438-0199-2.htm
By Brandon Keim September 9, 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from
your conscious mind, it might not be gone. In a study of college
students, brain imaging detected patterns of activation that
corresponded to memories the students thought they'd lost. "Even
though your brain still holds this information, you might not always
have access to it," said neurobiologist Jeffrey Johnson of the
University of California, Irvine. His remarks appeared in the study he
co-authored, published Wednesday in Neuron. That recalling a memory
triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed
is a tenet of cognitive science. Less understood, however, is what
becomes of those patterns at moments of incomplete recall...."It
wasn't quite clear what happens to them," said Johnson of lost
details. "But even when people claim that there are no details
attached to their memories, we could still pick some of those details
out."....

Johnson's team put eleven female and five male college students inside
an fMRI machine, which measures real-time patterns of blood flow in
the brain. Each student was shown a list of words, then asked to say
each word backwards, think of how it could be used, and imagine how an
artist would draw it. Twenty minutes later, the researchers showed
them the list again, and asked the students to remember what they
could of each word. Recollection triggered the original learning
patterns, a process known technically as reinstatement; the stronger
the memory, the stronger the signal. "What I think is cool about the
study is that the degree of cortical reinstatement is related to the
strength of our subjective experience of memory," said Anthony Wagner,
a Stanford University memory researcher who wasn't involved in the
experiment. But at the weak end of the gradient, where the students'
conscious recall had faded to zero, the signal was still there. It's
possible that the students lied about what they remembered. But if
not, then memory may truly persist.

The question then is how long memories could last - weeks, months,
even years. "We can only speculate that this is the case," said
Johnson, who plans to run brain-imaging studies of memory degradation
over days and weeks. As for whether those memories could be
intentionally guided to the surface, Johnson says that "at this stage,
we're just happy to be able to find evidence of reinstatement at a
weak level. That would be something down the line."
Citation: "Recollection, Familiarity, and Cortical Reinstatement: A
Multivoxel Pattern Analysis." By Jeffrey D. Johnson, Susan G.R.
McDuff, Michael D. Rugg, and Kenneth A. Norman. Neuron, Vol. 63 Issue
5, September 8, 2009.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/

Recollection, Familiarity, and Cortical Reinstatement: A Multivoxel
Pattern Analysis
Jeffrey D. Johnson1, 4, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-
mail The Corresponding Author, Susan G.R. McDuff2, 4, Michael D. Rugg1
and Kenneth A. Norman2, 3
1Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Department of
Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine,
CA 92697, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544,
USA
3Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
08544, USA
Published: September 9, 2009.
Summary
Episodic memory retrieval is thought to involve reinstatement of the
neurocognitive processes engaged when an episode was encoded. Prior
fMRI studies and computational models have suggested that
reinstatement is limited to instances in which specific episodic
details are recollected. We used multivoxel pattern-classification
analyses of fMRI data to investigate how reinstatement is associated
with different memory judgments, particularly those accompanied by
recollection versus a feeling of familiarity (when recollection is
absent). Classifiers were trained to distinguish between brain
activity patterns associated with different encoding tasks and were
subsequently applied to recognition-related fMRI data to determine the
degree to which patterns were reinstated. Reinstatement was evident
during both recollection- and familiarity-based judgments, providing
clear evidence that reinstatement is not sufficient for eliciting a
recollective experience. The findings are interpreted as support for a
continuous, recollection-related neural signal that has been central
to recent debate over the nature of recognition memory processes.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSS-4X6GR82-H&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F10%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ec41eaf57212c754a5f6a93f4d889eba


Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations
of Memory, Personal or Commodity, Public or Private?" Papers
pertaining to: collective memory; personal memory; narrative; new and
old sociological theories and conceptualizations of memory;
sociological, psychological, historical or legal conceptualizations
pertaining to personal, trauma, repressed, body memory; socio-
political issues pertaining to "commodity memory" (such as electronic
dataveillance, video surveillance; seed, sperm, egg or DNA banking);
drug technology to improve or repress memory; and closely related
topics are invited to present their research at the 2010 Pacific
Sociological Association's 81st Annual meeting, to be held at the
Marriott Oakland City Center in downtown Oakland, California on April
8 - 11 (Thursday - Saturday), 2010. Past papers from this session are
featured in the book, Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum
(2009), forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. For more
information see: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Sociology-of-Memory--Papers-from-the-Spectrum1-4438-0199-2.htm

Please send initial inquirers, abstracts and contact information to:
Noel Packard at packardn@xxxxxxxxxxx Visit the Pacific Sociological
Association website at http://www.pacificsoc.org for conference
information and paper submission procedures. Follow links to Session
Category Theory, Sociological Imagination, Knowledge, Science and
Technology and within that category find the Sociology of Memory link.
Deadline: November 15, 2009.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
    ... 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from ... triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed ... a process known technically as reinstatement; ... Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations ...
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  • Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
    ... 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from ... triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed ... a process known technically as reinstatement; ... Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations ...
    (misc.legal)
  • Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
    ... 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from ... triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed ... a process known technically as reinstatement; ... Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
    ... 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from ... triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed ... a process known technically as reinstatement; ... Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations ...
    (sci.psychology.misc)
  • Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
    ... 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from ... triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed ... a process known technically as reinstatement; ... Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations ...
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