Neural dynamics underlying the amplification, inhibition, and integration of material-specific long-term memory representations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Patrick Khader
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2008 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 72251309

Psychobiological research dealing with storage and retrieval of long-term memoryrepresentations have primarily focused on brain structures where information is Consolidatedand reactivated (bottleneck structures within the medial temporal lobe, storage structures within parietal and inferior temporal cortex), but they have paid less attention to processes that suppress interfering, amplify relevant, integrate partial information, and finally evaluate the result of retrieval with respect to a recognition decision or a reproduction response. In our working hypothesis, we assume that these processes bear strong similarities to attention processes described for Sensation and perception, and to other executive functions that serve to solve conflict and interference between competing Stimuli or responses. Accordingly, we want to investigate how selective attenuation, amplification and Integration of engrams during Memory retrieval become manifest in biological Signals, which brain structures are involved and how these interact. To this end, we will record EEG and functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) responses and we will relate the results of both Signal domains. The localization of generators of EEG amplitude and frequency changes will be determined by means of fMRI-restricted source analyses. Wavelet and coherence analyses will be used to describe the temporal dynamics of these changes, in particular, the interaction between functionally distinct cortical areas.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Major Instrumentation: EEG-Verstärkersystem
• Instrumentation Group: 3430 Elektro-Enzephalographen
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Frank Rösler