ERP components linked to Memory Retrieval
300-500ms "FN400"
- Mid-frontal Negativity (such that old items have a reduced negativity)
- Elicited in stimuli with semantic content (e.g., words, pictures)
- Not sensitive to levels of encoding
- Modulated by "familiarity" (as indexed in the Remember/Know paradigm)
- Taken to reflect a distinct neural mechanism for "familiarity" (in contrast with "recollection", e.g., Woodruff et al, 2006)
- Alternative account: taken to reflect "conceptual priming" (Voss et al, 2010)
400-800ms Late Positive Complex (LPC)
- (broadly distributed) posterior positivity (such that old items are more positive-going than new ones)
- Left lateralized for verbal stimuli
- Sensitive to levels of encoding: larger effect for items more deeply encoded
- Taken to be neural correlates of "recollection" (that is distinct from "familiarity")
- Alternative account: quantitatively modulated by a continuum of familiarity (one end of which being "recollection")
600-1200ms (Post-retrieval operations)
- New vs. old
- Right Frontal Negativity
- Task-induced? Present in Source memory task (the retrieval of the context, or "source" in which the item was encoded)
References:
On the original Old/New effect (central parietal negativity)
Rugg, M.D. et al. (1998) Dissociation of the neural correlates of implicit and explicit memory. Nature 392, 595-598
On familiarity effect (FN400)
Rugg, M. D. & Curran, T. (2007). Event-related potentials and recognition memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(6), pp251-257
Woodruff, C. C., Hayama, H. R., Rugg, M. D. (2006). Electrophysiological dissociation of the neural correlates of recollection and familiarity. Brain Research, 1100, pp125-135