Schneider Else, Züst Marc Alain, Wuethrich Sergej, Schmidig Flavio, Klöppel Stefan, Wiest Roland, Ruch Simon, Henke Katharina
Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012 Bern, Switzerland; University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, Bolligenstraße 111, 3000 Bern, Switzerland.
Curr Biol. 2021 Aug 23;31(16):3551-3563.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.012. Epub 2021 Jul 12.
Episodic memory is the memory for experienced events. A peak competence of episodic memory is the mental combination of events to infer commonalities. Inferring commonalities may proceed with and without consciousness of events. Yet what distinguishes conscious from unconscious inference? This question inspired nine experiments that featured strongly and weakly masked cartoon clips presented for unconscious and conscious inference. Each clip featured a scene with a visually impenetrable hiding place. Five animals crossed the scene one-by-one consecutively. One animal trajectory represented one event. The animals moved through the hiding place, where they might linger or not. The participants' task was to observe the animals' entrances and exits to maintain a mental record of which animals hid simultaneously. We manipulated information load to explore capacity limits. Memory of inferences was tested immediately, 3.5 or 6 min following encoding. The participants retrieved inferences well when encoding was conscious. When encoding was unconscious, the participants needed to respond intuitively. Only habitually intuitive decision makers exhibited a significant delayed retrieval of inferences drawn unconsciously. Their unconscious retrieval performance did not drop significantly with increasing information load, while conscious retrieval performance dropped significantly. A working memory network, including hippocampus, was activated during both conscious and unconscious inference and correlated with retrieval success. An episodic retrieval network, including hippocampus, was activated during both conscious and unconscious retrieval of inferences and correlated with retrieval success. Only conscious encoding/retrieval recruited additional brain regions outside these networks. Hence, levels of consciousness influenced the memories' behavioral impact, memory capacity, and the neural representational code.
情景记忆是对经历过的事件的记忆。情景记忆的一个巅峰能力是对事件进行心理组合以推断共性。推断共性可以在有意识和无意识的情况下进行。然而，有意识推理和无意识推理的区别是什么呢？这个问题激发了九项实验，这些实验以呈现给无意识和有意识推理的强掩蔽和弱掩蔽卡通片段为特色。每个片段都有一个带有视觉上无法穿透的藏身之处的场景。五只动物依次连续穿过该场景。一条动物轨迹代表一个事件。动物们穿过藏身之处，它们可能会在那里停留，也可能不停留。参与者的任务是观察动物的进出，以在脑海中记录哪些动物同时藏了起来。我们操纵信息负荷以探索容量限制。在编码后立即、3.5分钟或6分钟测试推理记忆。当编码是有意识的时候，参与者能很好地检索推理。当编码是无意识的时候，参与者需要直观地做出反应。只有习惯上直观的决策者在无意识做出的推理的检索上表现出显著的延迟。他们的无意识检索表现不会随着信息负荷的增加而显著下降，而有意识检索表现则会显著下降。一个包括海马体的工作记忆网络在有意识和无意识推理过程中都会被激活，并且与检索成功相关。一个包括海马体的情景检索网络在有意识和无意识检索推理过程中都会被激活，并且与检索成功相关。只有有意识的编码/检索会在这些网络之外招募额外的脑区。因此，意识水平影响了记忆的行为影响、记忆容量和神经表征代码。
