Formation Of Novel Associations Research Articles

The difference between induced insight by hints and induced insight by answers: an event-related potential study.

We can solve insight problems by ourselves, by hints or by answers. This study compared the temporal features of different types of insight (spontaneous insight, induced insight by hints and induced insight by answers). Fifteen college students participated in the Chinese Remote Association Task. If they did not come up with an answer, the cue word was presented. Finally, they needed to judge whether the answer was correct or not. Participants' brain electroencephalography-event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Induced insight by hints elicited a more negative ERP deflection than spontaneous insight within 260-400 ms (N2). Induced insight by hints and induced insight by answers elicited a more negative late negative component (LNC) than spontaneous insight. Induced insight by hints elicited a more positive ERP deflection than induced insight by answers and spontaneous insight in the right frontal area. Spontaneous insight and induced insight by answers elicited a more positive ERP deflection than induced insight by hints in the right part of the central region. When solving insight problems, the N2 may be related to representation restructuring. The first LNC may be related to the breaking of mental set. The positive component of the right frontal area before pressing the button may be related to the formation of novel associations, and the positive component of the right part of the central region may be related to the intensity of the 'Aha!' experience.

Is there a role of creativity in the relationship between working memory consolidation and long-term memory?

While holding items in working memory has been shown to improve delayed long-term recall, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. One potential mechanism is working memory consolidation, which may facilitate the formation of novel associations between items during learning and lead to improved memory search at delayed retrieval. Forming novel associations via consolidation may share mechanisms with creative ability. The present research aims to explore how an individual's creativity relates to the relationship between working memory consolidation and long-term memory. In Experiment 1, participants completed a stimulus identification task that manipulated the need for consolidation followed by a surprise delayed recognition task and measures of objective and self-reported creativity. While creativity scores were correlated with general performance on memory tasks, this effect was not related to working memory consolidation. In Experiment 2, participants were induced into either a creative or a non-creative state prior to completing the stimulus identification and delayed recognition tasks. Performance on these tasks was not significantly different between the groups and was again unrelated to working memory consolidation. The results of these two experiments suggest that creativity is not related to the mechanism underlying the effect of working memory consolidation on delayed recognition.

The effects of item familiarity on the neural correlates of successful associative memory encoding.

Associative memory is considered to be resource-demanding, requiring individuals to learn individual items and the specific relationships between those items. Previous research has shown that prior studying of items aids in associative memory for pairs composed of those same items, as compared to pairs of items that have not been prelearned (e.g., Kilb & Naveh-Benjamin, 2011). In the present study, we sought to elucidate the neural correlates mediating this memory facilitation. After being trained on individual items, participants were scanned while encoding item pairs composed of items from the pretrained phase (familiarized-item pairs) and pairs whose items had not been previously learned (unfamiliarized-item pairs). Consistent with previous findings, the overall subsequent recollection showed the engagement of bilateral parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) and hippocampus, when compared to subsequent forgetting. However, a direct comparison between familiarized- and unfamiliarized-item pairs showed that subsequently recollected familiarized-item pairs were associated with decreased activity across much of the encoding network, including bilateral PHG, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and regions associated with item-specific processing within occipital cortex. Increased activity for familiarized-item pairs was found in a more limited set of regions, including bilateral parietal cortex, which has been associated with the formation of novel associations. Additionally, activity in the right parietal cortex correlated with associative memory success in the familiarized condition. Taken together, these results suggest that prior exposure to items can reduce the demands incurred on neural processing throughout the associative encoding network and can enhance associative memory performance by focusing resources within regions supporting the formation of associative links.

Neural Basis of Creative Thinking during Four Stages

Wallas put forward an important creative process model and defined four stages of creativity as follows: preparation,incubation,illumination,and verification. The investigations of brain state before the presentation of a creative problem show that the neural activity of the preparation stage is associate with medial PFC/ACC and temporal areas. The neuroscientific researches on presentation of a hint during incubation,delayed insight and mind-wandering reflect the neural correlates of incubation,and the main active brain regions during this stage include hippocampus and ventrolateral PFC. The last two stages are associated with a neural network consisting of several brain regions including PFC,ACC,superior temporal gyrus,hippocampus,precunes,cunes,lingual gyrus and cerebellum et al. The PFC and ACC are involved in different kinds of insight problem solving; the superior temporal gyrus is responsible for the formation of remote associations; the hippocampus is associated with the process of mental set breaking and formation of novel associations; the lateral prefrontal cortex is responsible for mental set shifting; the precunes,left middle/inferior frontal gyrus and lingual gyrus participate in the process of prototype activation. In addition,the verification of the details of solution is found to rely on the left lateral prefrontal cortex. Future studies can be improved in the aspects of research subjects,contents and methods,so that the process of creative thinking can be investigated systematically.

Evidence of sleep-facilitating effect on formation of novel semantic associations: An event-related potential (ERP) study

Paired-associates learning of unrelated words can reflect the formation of a new association in the semantic network. Research results on the facilitating effect of sleep on unrelated word-pair associates learning remain contradictory. The behavioral measures used in previous studies may not have been sensitive enough to reflect the process of new word association during sleep. The present study used the N400 component of event-related potential (ERP) to further assess the facilitating effect of sleep on the formation of new semantic associations. Thirty subjects were randomly assigned to either the Sleep group or the Wakefulness group. After paired-associates learning and pre-test, they underwent nocturnal sleep and sleep deprivation, respectively. A post-test was conducted after the subjects had one night of recovery sleep. ERPs were recorded during both test phases. Behavioral data showed significant differences in improvements in recognition and decreases in reaction time from pre-test to post-test between the Sleep and Wakefulness groups. The N400 peak amplitude attenuated significantly after sleep, but not after wakefulness. These results suggest that sleep has a facilitating effect on the formation of novel associations. Unexpectedly, slow wave sleep was negatively correlated with improvement in recognition during the post-test but was positively correlated with the number of word-pairs acquired during the learning phase. This may the result of a ceiling effect limiting the improvement achieved in subjects who learned better during the learning phase.

Enhancing insight in scientific problem solving by highlighting the functional features of prototypes: An fMRI study

Insight can be the first step toward creating a groundbreaking product. As evident in anecdotes and major inventions in history, heuristic events (heuristic prototypes) prompted inventors to acquire insight when solving problems. Bionic imitation in scientific innovation is an example of this kind of problem solving. In particular, heuristic prototypes (e.g., the lotus effect; the very high water repellence exhibited by lotus leaves) help solve insight problems (e.g., non-stick surfaces). We speculated that the biological functional feature of prototypes is a critical factor in inducing insightful scientific problem solving. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we selected scientific innovation problems and utilized “learning prototypes-solving problems” two-phase paradigm to test the supposition. We also explored its neural mechanisms. Functional MRI data showed that the activation of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG, BA 37) and the middle occipital gyrus (MOG, BA 19) were associated with the highlighted functional feature condition. fMRI data also indicated that the MTG (BA 37) could be responsible for the semantic processing of functional features and for the formation of novel associations based on related functions. In addition, the MOG (BA 19) could be involved in the visual imagery of formation and application of function association between the heuristic prototype and problem. Our findings suggest that both semantic processing and visual imagery could be crucial components underlying scientific problem solving.

Brain mechanisms of valuable scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge

Heuristics through the application of heuristic knowledge to the creation of imitation devices may be one of the most common processes in scientific innovation. In particular, heuristics suggests that innovation includes the automatic activation of heuristic knowledge and formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations. In this study, 76 scientific innovation problem situations were selected as materials. Among these, 36 contain related heuristic knowledge and 40 have no such information. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, the learning-testing paradigm was used to explore the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. Participants were asked to find a problem on the basis of a given innovation problem situation. Two scenarios were presented: finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge and finding conventional problems without related heuristic knowledge. The authors assumed that the regions in the brain significantly activated by the finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge condition compared with the finding normal problems without related heuristic knowledge condition are relevant to the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. The first scenario more significantly activated the left precuneus and left angular gyrus than did the second scenario. These findings suggest that the precuneus is relevant to the successful storage and retrieval of heuristic knowledge and that the left angular gyrus is involved in the formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations for finding scientific problems.

Right Hemispheric Dominance of Creative Insight: An Event-Related Potential Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hemispheric effect of creative insight. This study used high-density ERPs to record participants' brain activity while they performed an insight task. Results showed that both insight solutions and incomprehension solutions elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N320∼550) than noninsight solutions in the time window of 320∼550 msec. Scalp ERPs and topographical maps revealed that the insight N320∼550 exhibited a relative RH dominance, whereas the incomprehension N320∼550 exhibited a relative midline dominance. Dipole source analysis showed that the generator of N320∼550 elicited by insight and incomprehension solutions was localized in the right middle frontal gyrus and the right parahippocampus gyrus, respectively. These distinct spatiotemporal patterns involved in insight processing and incomprehension processing suggest that the observed N320∼550 might reflect the processing of set-shift and the formation of novel associations. Moreover, the spatiotemporal pattern of brain activation associated with insight solutions supported the idea that the right hemispheric dominance theory of creative thinking also applies to creative insight.

Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake

Numerous studies have examined sleep's influence on a range of hippocampus-dependent declarative memory tasks, from text learning to spatial navigation. In this study, we examined the impact of sleep, wake, and time-of-day influences on the processing of declarative information with strong semantic links (semantically related word pairs) and information requiring the formation of novel associations (unrelated word pairs). Participants encoded a set of related or unrelated word pairs at either 9am or 9pm, and were then tested after an interval of 30 min, 12 hr, or 24 hr. The time of day at which subjects were trained had no effect on training performance or initial memory of either word pair type. At 12 hr retest, memory overall was superior following a night of sleep compared to a day of wakefulness. However, this performance difference was a result of a pronounced deterioration in memory for unrelated word pairs across wake; there was no sleep-wake difference for related word pairs. At 24 hr retest, with all subjects having received both a full night of sleep and a full day of wakefulness, we found that memory was superior when sleep occurred shortly after learning rather than following a full day of wakefulness. Lastly, we present evidence that the rate of deterioration across wakefulness was significantly diminished when a night of sleep preceded the wake period compared to when no sleep preceded wake, suggesting that sleep served to stabilize the memories against the deleterious effects of subsequent wakefulness. Overall, our results demonstrate that 1) the impact of 12 hr of waking interference on memory retention is strongly determined by word-pair type, 2) sleep is most beneficial to memory 24 hr later if it occurs shortly after learning, and 3) sleep does in fact stabilize declarative memories, diminishing the negative impact of subsequent wakefulness.

Event-Related Potential Effects Associated with Insight Problem Solving in a Chinese Logogriph Task

The electrophysiological correlates of insight and non-insight problems solving were studied using event- related potentials (ERPs). Participants were given some time to guess Chinese logogriphs and then presented with an answer to judge whether it matched the logogriph. Results showed that the insight trials elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N300-500) than did the non-insight trials in most scalp regions. In a later time window from 600 ms to 1100 ms, the insight trials elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P600-1100) than the non-insight trials, mostly in central regions. The results indicate that the early N300-500 effect may reflect cognitive conflict resulting from the breaking of mental set and the later P600-1100 effect may be related to the formation of novel associations, both crucial to the occurrence of insight.

Creating novel food webs on introduced Australian acacias: indirect effects of galling biological control agents

AbstractAim The use of host‐specific biological control agents is widely considered an effective option for the management of invasive alien plant species. However, the formation of novel associations between released biological control agents and indigenous species poses risks. Here, we investigate whether native food webs associated with two galling biological control agents on Acacia longifolia and A. saligna are similar to those found in their introduced range.Location Gall inhabitants recorded from South Africa and Australia.Methods Non‐targeted insects were collected from galls in introduced ranges for comparisons to that of the agents’ native ranges.Results We find that two host plant‐specific galling biological control agents accumulate food web links with higher trophic levels in their introduced range that are similar in number, taxonomic/phylogenetic pattern and guild composition to those in their native range. Bray‐Curtis percentage similarity between native (Australia) and novel (South Africa) food webs was 30–50% and 50–75% at the family and superfamily taxonomic level, respectively, and 45–50% if considering shared phylogenetic diversity.Main conclusions Trichilogaster acaciaelongifoliae and Uromycladium tepperianum accumulated food webs in South Africa that are strikingly similar in complexity and structure to those that occur in their native ranges. This indicates that the structure of food webs in the introduced range could be predicted by studying food webs in the native range of a biological control agent, potentially paving the way for more effective risk assessment of weed biological control.

Arbitrary associations in animals: What can paired associate recall in rats tell us about the neural basis of episodic memory? Theoretical comment on Kesner, Hunsaker, & Warthen (2008).

Detailed memories for unique episodes from an individual's past can be triggered, often effortlessly, when that individual is exposed to a stimulus that was present during the original event. The aim of Kesner et al. is to understand the neural basis of memory encoding that supports this cued recall of episodic memories. Kesner and colleagues make novel use of an object-place paired-associate task for rats to provide evidence for a critical role of dorsal CA3 in certain aspects of episodic memory encoding. Using one-trial cued recall versions of the task they show that when rats are cued with an object stimulus, they can be trained to revisit the location in which the object appeared previously. Conversely, when rats are cued with a location, they can learn to choose the object with which it was associated. Rats with dorsal CA3 lesions are severely impaired at these tasks. These data are consistent with the theory that the autoassociative network in CA3 supports the rapid formation of novel associations and may allow pattern completion--the phenomenom whereby a subset of the cues present at an encoding event triggers recall of the whole event. Although flexible recall of arbitrary associations is not fully demonstrated, the study contributes 2 novel behavioral tasks to the previously limited repertoire for studying paired associate recall in rats. It also builds on previous data to specify the role of the hippocampal CA3 subregion in cued recall--a critical aspect of episodic memory.

Implicit memory and aging: A cognitive neuropsychological perspective

Although it is well‐established that there are age deficits on measures of explicit memory, there is conflicting evidence as to whether implicit memory, as measured by performance on various repetition priming tasks, is impaired by age. In order to clarify the relation between aging and implicit memory, priming tasks were organized in the following categories: (a) perceptual‐item priming, (b) perceptual‐associative priming, (c) conceptual‐item priming, (d) conceptual‐associative priming, and (e) perceptual‐motor priming. The taxonomy took into account the type of mental representation that different priming tasks depend on, the neurological structures responsible for these representations, the extent to which priming tasks demand the formation of novel associations, and the various blends of data‐driven and conceptually driven processes that facilitate task performance. A literature review based on this taxonomy revealed two tentative conclusions. First, the processes associated with normal aging are like...