Ruiz-Contreras A, Cansino S
Laboratorio de Neurocognición, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México DF, Mexico.
Rev Neurol. 2005;41(12):733-43.
Attention is the process that provides us with the capacity to select perceptions or internal representations for conscious processing and action. Given that episodic memory is where our personal experiences are stored together with the context they take place in, it has been observed that disturbances affecting attention, whether they are due to neurological disorders or experimental manipulation, deteriorate the storage of episodic information.
The aim of this study is to explain, from a neurophysiological perspective, how the processes of attention and memory interact with each other and which areas of the brain are involved in those processes. This objective is motivated by the fact that, despite empirical evidence supporting the interaction between the two processes, to our knowledge no reviews dealing with such an interaction have been published to date in the literature.
In this work attention and memory are defined in terms of the neurophysiological changes that take place when the two processes occur. In what follows we offer a description of the systems that constitute attention, as well as those involved in the acquisition and recognition of information in episodic memory. Finally, we propose a possible explanation of how the mechanisms of interaction between these two processes work.
The system of attention and the system of episodic memory are brought into play at the same time; the prefrontal cortex, in particular, plays a role in both processes. Attention seems to precede the mechanisms behind the acquisition of information while it is held during recognition.
注意力是一种使我们能够选择感知或内部表征以进行有意识加工和行动的过程。鉴于情景记忆是我们个人经历与其发生背景一同存储的地方，据观察，影响注意力的干扰，无论其是由神经疾病还是实验操作引起，都会使情景信息的存储恶化。
本研究的目的是从神经生理学角度解释注意力和记忆过程如何相互作用，以及大脑的哪些区域参与这些过程。这一目标的提出是因为，尽管有实证证据支持这两个过程之间的相互作用，但据我们所知，迄今为止文献中尚未发表过关于这种相互作用的综述。
在这项工作中，注意力和记忆是根据这两个过程发生时所发生的神经生理学变化来定义的。接下来，我们将描述构成注意力的系统，以及参与情景记忆中信息获取和识别的系统。最后，我们提出这两个过程之间相互作用机制如何运作的一种可能解释。
注意力系统和情景记忆系统同时发挥作用；特别是前额叶皮质在这两个过程中都发挥作用。注意力似乎在信息获取背后的机制之前起作用，而在识别过程中保持。
