Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Department for Vision, Visual Impairments & Blindness, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, TU Dortmund University, Germany.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2021 Apr;48:100926. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100926. Epub 2021 Jan 27.
The specificity with which past experiences can be remembered varies across the lifespan, possibly due to differences in how precisely information is encoded. Memory formation can be investigated through repetition effects, the common finding that neural activity is altered when stimuli are repeated. However, whether differences in this indirect measure of memory formation relate to lifespan differences in memory specificity has not yet been established. In the present study, we examined repetition effects in event-related potentials and their relation to recognition. During incidental encoding, children (aged 7-9 years), young adults (18-30 years), and older adults (65-76 years) viewed repeated object images from different categories. During subsequent recognition, we distinguished memory for the specific items versus the general categories. We identified repetition suppression in all age groups, and repetition enhancement for adults. Furthermore, individual item recognition performance comprising lure discrimination was positively associated with the magnitude of the neural repetition effects, which did not differ between groups, indicating common neural mechanisms of memory formation. Our findings demonstrate that neural repetition effects reflect the formation of highly specific memory representations and highlight their significance as a neural indicator of individual differences in episodic memory encoding across the lifespan.
过去的经验在不同的生命周期中被记住的特异性有所不同，这可能是由于信息编码的精确程度不同所致。可以通过重复效应来研究记忆形成，即当刺激重复时，神经活动发生改变的常见发现。然而，这种间接测量记忆形成的差异是否与记忆特异性的生命周期差异有关，尚未确定。在本研究中，我们研究了事件相关电位中的重复效应及其与识别的关系。在偶然编码期间，儿童（7-9 岁）、年轻人（18-30 岁）和老年人（65-76 岁）观看了来自不同类别的重复物体图像。在随后的识别中，我们区分了特定项目与一般类别的记忆。我们在所有年龄组中都发现了重复抑制，而成年人则出现了重复增强。此外，包含诱饵辨别力的个体项目识别表现与神经重复效应的幅度呈正相关，并且各组之间没有差异，这表明记忆形成的共同神经机制。我们的研究结果表明，神经重复效应反映了高度特异性记忆表示的形成，并强调了它们作为个体间差异的神经指标的重要性在整个生命周期的情节记忆编码中。
