Researchers have identified the neural activity that occurs when the brain "sets the stage" for retaining a memory.
A finding that could have important implications for memory research and help determine ways in which people can strengthen memories they want to retain while weakening ones they would rather forget.
The results of the study appear as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
In two separate experiments with adults, UCI neuroscientist Michael Rugg, in collaboration with colleagues from University College London, looked at neural activity that preceded the presentation of single words. They found that measures of the activity could predict whether the words would be remembered in a later memory test.
In the experiments, Rugg and his colleagues presented a group of young adults with a different word every four or five seconds, requiring them to make a judgment about a specific characteristic of the word, such as whether it referred to a living or a non-living thing. A moment before each word was presented, participants were "cued" with a visual signal that alerted them of the upcoming word. Neural activity caused by the cue was monitored through electroencephalograpy, or EEG, a method by which electrodes attached to the scalp measure underlying brain activity. Later, participants were shown the words again, along with words they had not previously been shown, and were asked to identify which ones had been presented in the first part of the experiment.
Rugg and his colleagues found that the distinct neural activity that occurred at the time of the cue indicated whether the word would be remembered in this test phase of the experiment.