Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Eur J Neurosci. 2018 Jun;47(12):1525-1533. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13984. Epub 2018 Jun 19.
At any time, we are processing thousands of stimuli, but only few of them will be remembered hours or days later. Is there any way to predict which ones? Here, we tested whether the pupil response to ongoing stimuli, an indicator of physiological arousal known to be relevant for memory formation, is a reliable predictor of long-term memory for these stimuli, over at least 1 day. Pupil dilation was tracked while participants performed visual and auditory encoding tasks. Memory was tested immediately after encoding and 24 hr later. Irrespective of the encoding modality, trial-by-trial variations in pupil dilation predicted reliably which stimuli were recalled in the immediate and 24 hr-delayed tests, in particular for emotionally arousing stimuli. These results show that our eyes may provide a window into the formation of long-term memories. Furthermore, our findings underline the important role of central arousal systems in the rapid formation of memories in the brain, possibly by gating synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the neocortex.
在任何时候，我们都在处理成千上万的刺激，但只有其中很少一部分会在数小时或数天后被记住。有没有办法预测哪些会被记住？在这里，我们测试了在持续刺激过程中瞳孔的反应——已知与记忆形成有关的生理唤醒的一个指标——是否可以作为这些刺激至少在 1 天的长期记忆的可靠预测指标。当参与者进行视觉和听觉编码任务时，我们跟踪了瞳孔扩张。在编码后立即和 24 小时后进行记忆测试。无论编码方式如何，瞳孔扩张的逐次变化都可以可靠地预测哪些刺激会在即时和 24 小时延迟测试中被回忆起来，对于情绪激动的刺激尤其如此。这些结果表明，我们的眼睛可能为长期记忆的形成提供了一个窗口。此外，我们的发现强调了中枢唤醒系统在大脑中快速形成记忆的重要作用，可能是通过门控新皮层中的突触可塑性机制。
