Surgical Neurology Branch, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2020 Sep;4(9):937-948. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0901-2. Epub 2020 Jun 29.
Despite large individual differences in memory performance, people remember certain stimuli with overwhelming consistency. This phenomenon is referred to as the memorability of an individual item. However, it remains unknown whether memorability also affects our ability to retrieve associations between items. Here, using a paired-associates verbal memory task, we combine behavioural data, computational modelling and direct recordings from the human brain to examine how memorability influences associative memory retrieval. We find that certain words are correctly retrieved across participants irrespective of the cues used to initiate memory retrieval. These words, which share greater semantic similarity with other words, are more readily available during retrieval and lead to more intrusions when retrieval fails. Successful retrieval of these memorable items, relative to less memorable ones, results in faster reinstatement of neural activity in the anterior temporal lobe. Collectively, our data reveal how the brain prioritizes certain information to facilitate memory retrieval.
尽管人们在记忆表现上存在很大的个体差异，但某些刺激的记忆却具有压倒性的一致性。这种现象被称为个体项目的可记性。然而，目前尚不清楚可记性是否也会影响我们检索项目之间关联的能力。在这里，我们使用配对联想言语记忆任务，结合行为数据、计算模型和来自人类大脑的直接记录，研究了可记性如何影响联想记忆检索。我们发现，某些单词在不同的参与者中都能被正确检索出来，而与用于启动记忆检索的线索无关。这些单词与其他单词具有更大的语义相似性，在检索时更容易获得，并且在检索失败时会导致更多的干扰。与不太容易记住的单词相比，这些令人难忘的项目的成功检索会导致前颞叶的神经活动更快地恢复。总的来说，我们的数据揭示了大脑如何优先处理某些信息以促进记忆检索。
