The cognitive neuroscience of memory

Abstract

The cognitive neuroscience of long-term memory is ingrained with the assumptions that a particular task measures a single cognitive process and that each cognitive process is mediated by a single brain region. However, these assumptions are simplistic and hindering progress toward understanding the true mechanisms of memory. This special issue of Cognitive Neuroscience presents five empirical papers and two theoretical discussion papers with peer commentaries on the spatial and/or temporal mechanisms of memory. Using fMRI, Yu et al. show ventral parietal cortex sub-regions mediate dissociable aspects of recollection, and Mickley Steinmetz et al. study time-delay effects on processes engaged during emotional versus neutral item encoding. Employing ERPs, Galli et al. investigate anticipatory activity and recall, and Evans et al. study the effect of cognitive demands on recollection activity. Using fMRI and ERPs, Herzmann et al. investigate spatial-temporal activity associated with recognition. Voss et al. review electrophysiological, fMRI, and behavioral evidence indicating implicit memory can influence explicit memory measures. Gotts et al. review electrophysiological, fMRI, and modeling evidence to evaluate proposals of repetition priming and highlight neural synchronization. These papers embrace complex cognitive and neural processes, and thus will provide a framework for future studies to investigate the mechanisms of memory.