Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Curr Biol. 2017 May 8;27(9):1251-1258. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.03.028. Epub 2017 Apr 20.
People often forget information because they fail to effectively encode it. Here, we test the hypothesis that targeted electrical stimulation can modulate neural encoding states and subsequent memory outcomes. Using recordings from neurosurgical epilepsy patients with intracranially implanted electrodes, we trained multivariate classifiers to discriminate spectral activity during learning that predicted remembering from forgetting, then decoded neural activity in later sessions in which we applied stimulation during learning. Stimulation increased encoding-state estimates and recall if delivered when the classifier indicated low encoding efficiency but had the reverse effect if stimulation was delivered when the classifier indicated high encoding efficiency. Higher encoding-state estimates from stimulation were associated with greater evidence of neural activity linked to contextual memory encoding. In identifying the conditions under which stimulation modulates memory, the data suggest strategies for therapeutically treating memory dysfunction.
人们经常忘记信息，是因为他们无法有效地对其进行编码。在这里，我们检验了这样一个假设，即靶向电刺激可以调节神经编码状态和随后的记忆结果。我们使用接受颅内植入电极的神经外科癫痫患者的记录，训练了多元分类器，以区分学习过程中的光谱活动，从而预测记忆和遗忘，然后在随后的学习过程中施加刺激的会话中对神经活动进行解码。如果在分类器表示编码效率低时施加刺激，刺激会增加编码状态估计和回忆，如果在分类器表示编码效率高时施加刺激，刺激则会产生相反的效果。来自刺激的更高的编码状态估计与与上下文记忆编码相关的神经活动的更多证据相关联。通过确定刺激调节记忆的条件，这些数据为治疗记忆功能障碍提供了策略。
