Implicit Memory Research Articles

Cytoplasmic Polyadenylation Element Binding Proteins CPEB1 and CPEB3 Regulate the Translation of FosB and Are Required for Maintaining Addiction-Like Behaviors Induced by Cocaine.

A recurrent and devastating feature of addiction to a drug of abuse is its persistence, which is mediated by maladaptive long-term memories of the highly pleasurable experience initially associated with the consumption of the drug. We have recently found that members of the CPEB family of proteins (Cytoplasmic Polyadenylation Element-Binding Proteins) are involved in the maintenance of spatial memory. However, their possible role in the maintenance of memories that sustain addictive behavior has yet to be explored. Little is known about any of the mechanisms for maintaining memories for addictive behavior. To address the mechanisms whereby addictive behavior is maintained over time, we utilized a conditional transgenic mouse model expressing a dominant-negative version of CPEB1 that abolishes the activity in the forebrain of two of the four CPEB isoforms (CPEB1 and CPEB3). We found that, following cocaine administration, these dominant-negative (DN) CPEB mice showed a significant decrease, when compared to wild type (WT) mice, in both locomotor sensitizations and conditioned place preference (CPP), two indices of addictive behavior. Supporting these behavioral results, we also found a difference between WT and DN-CPEB1-3 mice in the cocaine-induced synaptic depression in the core of the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc). Finally, we found that (1) CPEB is reduced in transgenic mice following cocaine injections and that (2) FosB, known for its contribution to establishing the addictive phenotype, when its expression in the striatum is increased by drug administration, is a novel target of CPEBs molecules. Thus, our study highlights how CPEB1 and CPEB3 act on target mRNAs to build the neuroadaptative implicit memory responses that lead to the development of the cocaine addictive phenotypes in mammals.

МОДЕЛІ, ЩО ВІДОБРАЖАЮТЬ ПРИНЦИПИ РОБОТИ МЕХАНІЗМІВ РОДОВОЇ КОНЦЕПЦІЇ В ПАМ’ЯТІ ЛЮДИНИ

Стаття присвячена результатам міждисциплінарного дослідження, що дозволило систематизувати знання про принципи роботи механізмів родової спадщини як блоку пам’яті індивіда у вигляді переліку моделей і опису логіки спрацьовування цих механізмів несвідомо. Розуміння і усвідомлення логіки цих процесів дозволяє керовано підходити до питань категорії вибору в широкому охопленні застосування цієї категорії.Мета цієї наукової розвідки: продемонструвати за допомогою логічних моделей систему функціонування механізмів родової спадщини як блоку пам’яті людини і надати тактичні рекомендації відносно того, як ці несвідомі процеси поставити під управління, тим самим визначаючи і формуючи власну долю усвідомлено.Представлена система логічних моделей, що описує ключові принципи роботи несвідомих механізмів пам’яті, закономірностей, знання яких дозволяє тактично згенерувати систему підходів, що дозволять людині у будь-якій ситуації не залежати від несвідомих реакцій, визначених змістом її родової спадщини, самостійно прогнозувати ситуації; вибирати кращу тактику реалізації професійних і особових завдань; управляти процесами життя і діяльності, домагаючись нових висот і досягнень, тим самим, в реалізації себе як сильній, підготовленій, вольовій і самостійній особи; бути суб’єктом свого життя.

Multitemporal materialism. History and unconscious memory, between Freud and Benjamin

ABSTRACT This article addresses the tense relationship between Sigmund Freud’s thinking and the materialist perspective of history. It presents a theoretical contribution that emerges from this dialogue and thoughtfully considers its contradictions. First, I synthesise Freud’s critiques of historical materialism, with the issue of psychic temporality occupying a key role. I then address the work of Walter Benjamin, who, in my view, has managed to fruitfully integrate a good part of Freud’s insights into the construction of a peculiar heterodox materialism that I call multitemporal. I support this claim in two ways: (a) I demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalysis as an indispensable source of nourishment for Benjamin’s thought; and (b) I identify a shared heritage (with Nietzsche) and some parallels between Freudian thought and Benjaminian materialism with respect to their conceptions of time, history, and unconscious memory, as well as the key differences that both distinguish them and enable them to question one another. I conclude by pointing out that, if we reflect upon what may be its theological impediments in a critical—that is, irreligious or metapsychological—light, Benjamin’s thought can provide a way to explore the contributions of psychoanalysis to critical social theory.

Functional dissociation of hippocampal subregions corresponding to memory types and stages

BackgroundThe hippocampus reportedly plays a crucial role in memory. However, examining individual human hippocampal-subfield function remains challenging because of their small sizes and convoluted structures. Here, we identified hippocampal subregions involved in memory types (implicit and explicit memory) and stages (encoding and retrieval).MethodsWe modified the serial reaction time task to examine four memory types, i.e. implicit encoding, explicit encoding, implicit retrieval, and explicit retrieval. During this task, 7-T functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare brain activity evoked by these memory types.ResultsWe found hippocampal activation according to all memory types and stages and identified that the hippocampus subserves both implicit and explicit memory processing. Moreover, we confirmed that cornu ammonis (CA) regions 1–3 were implicated in both memory encoding and retrieval, whereas the subiculum was implicated only in memory retrieval. We also found that CA 1–3 was activated more for explicit than implicit memory.ConclusionsThese results elucidate human hippocampal-subfield functioning underlying memory and may support future investigations into hippocampal-subfield functioning in health and neurodegenerative disease.

The Role of Working Memory in Implicit Memory: A Developmental Perspective

Long-term memory (LTM) can be acquired without conscious awareness resulting in implicit memory. However, lack of awareness does not necessarily mean fully independent of working memory (WM). In the current study, 6-8-year-olds, 11-13-year-olds, and young adults completed two implicit memory tasks while undertaking either a concurrent visual or a concurrent spatial working memory task. All three groups demonstrated significant implicit memory, showing that limited working memory resources do not limit the acquisition of implicit memory even for children. Additionally, the magnitudes of implicit LTM did not vary as a function of either age or modality of the concurrent task. Furthermore, correlational analyses established the independence of WM and implicit LTM in the spatial domain, although the evidence for independence was less conclusive in the visual domain. Lastly, there was no evidence that presenting concurrent WM reduced implicit LTM for children or adults. Together, our study suggested that the acquisition of implicit LTM was not constrained by limited WM capacity across ages and modalities.

Lateralized memory circuit dropout in Alzheimer's disease patients.

Altered connectivity within neuronal networks is often observed in Alzheimer’s disease. However, delineating pro-cognitive compensatory changes from pathological network decline relies on characterizing network and task effects together. In this study, we interrogated the dynamics of occipito-temporo-frontal brain networks responsible for implicit and explicit memory processes using high-density EEG and dynamic causal modelling. We examined source-localized network activity from patients with Alzheimer’s disease (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 21), while they performed both visual recognition (explicit memory) and implicit priming tasks. Parametric empirical Bayes analyses identified significant reductions in temporo-frontal connectivity and in subcortical visual input in patients, specifically in the left hemisphere during the recognition task. There was also slowing in frontal left hemisphere signal transmission during the implicit priming task, with significantly more distinct dropout in connectivity during the recognition task, suggesting that these network drop-out effects are affected by task difficulty. Furthermore, during the implicit memory task, increased right frontal activity was correlated with improved task performance in patients only, suggesting that right-hemisphere compensatory mechanisms may be employed to mitigate left-lateralized network dropout in Alzheimer’s disease. Taken together, these findings suggest that Alzheimer’s disease is associated with lateralized memory circuit dropout and potential compensation from the right hemisphere, at least for simpler memory tasks.

Implicit associative memory remains intact with age and extends to target-distractor pairs

ABSTRACT In this study, we use a novel, implicit memory paradigm to test forhyper-binding, or older adults’ tendency to form non-target associations. Participants viewed pictures of objects superimposed with text and made speeded categorization judgments about the objects across three blocks varying in binding demand. During the no- and some-binding blocks, participants decided if the pictured object alone could fit inside a drawer while ignoring superimposed non-words and words, respectively. During the full-binding block, participants decided if both items could fit inside a drawer together. At test, participants viewed intact and rearranged pairs from encoding and decided if both items could fit in a drawer together. Across two experiments, older adults responded faster to intact than rearranged pairs from both the some- and full-binding blocks, while young adults showed no difference in RTs. These findings suggest that implicit associative memory is preserved with age and extends to non-target information.

Birds without vertigo

Abstract The author seeks his mind thread in the gap between the dance film Vertigo Bird of Sašo Podgoršek and Iztok Kovač from 1997 and Kovač’s own recent premiered performance Vertigo Birds. This leads Lukan to think about the problems of reenactment and is led to consider the conscious and the unconscious memory of creators as well as spectators.

Long-term implicit memory for sequential auditory patterns in humans.

Memory, on multiple timescales, is critical to our ability to discover the structure of our surroundings, and efficiently interact with the environment. We combined behavioural manipulation and modelling to investigate the dynamics of memory formation for rarely reoccurring acoustic patterns. In a series of experiments, participants detected the emergence of regularly repeating patterns within rapid tone-pip sequences. Unbeknownst to them, a few patterns reoccurred every ~3 min. All sequences consisted of the same 20 frequencies and were distinguishable only by the order of tone-pips. Despite this, reoccurring patterns were associated with a rapidly growing detection-time advantage over novel patterns. This effect was implicit, robust to interference, and persisted for 7 weeks. The results implicate an interplay between short (a few seconds) and long-term (over many minutes) integration in memory formation and demonstrate the remarkable sensitivity of the human auditory system to sporadically reoccurring structure within the acoustic environment.

The symbol in the body: the un-doing of a dissociation through Embodied Active Imagination in Jungian analysis.

Jung understood dissociation as a natural state of the psyche, capable of turning defensive through development. Based on this premise, and its conception on the equivalence between psyche and matter, the present work describes the un-doing of a dissociation expressed through a chronic enterocolitis disorder. When the symbol remains closer to the body and its most instinctive manifestations, we need to descend to that level in order to let the vertical axis connection be gradually restored through the therapeutic relationship - the horizontal axis. In other words, this un-doing requires that patient and analyst follow the unconscious path proposed by symbolic expressions that gradually emerge through the patient's body and active imagination. Movement is our most primitive and fundamental experience. Many authors (Stern, Panksepp, Gallese) have agreed that, in addition to being first in terms of development, movement continues to have primacy over any other experience throughout life. This means that emotions, bodily concepts and, later, speech, evolve from a somatic basis. In the light of such neuroscientific findings, Jung's vision of the correspondence of psyche and matter will be revisited in order to portray how the analytic bond provides a context for the re-establishment of the linking/creative function of the archetype, and allows the restoring of the ego-Self axis connection by including non-verbal approaches, such as body-based active imagination, also known as Authentic Movement. Authentic Movement is an amplification of Jung's active imagination method that enables a dialogue between the ego and the diverse configurations of the unconscious. When such dialogue is grounded in the body, there is an easier access to the affective dimension stored in implicit memory. That which was relived through the body can gradually be remembered, and affects hitherto rejected, find other symbolic ways of being expressed and contained in the analytic vas.

The effects of retrieval interference on different types of implicit memory

The effects of retrieval interference on different types of implicit memory

Beyond the mean reaction time: Trial-by-trial reaction time reveals the distraction effect on perceptual-motor sequence learning

Perceptual-motor sequences can be learned quickly under distraction, often demonstrated by the mean reaction time (RT) change in a serial reaction time (SRT) task. However, any arbitrary mean RT can arise from one of many distinct trial-by-trial RT patterns. It is surprising that previous sequence learning studies have hinged only on the mean RT metrics while little is known about the distraction effect on its trial-by-trial processes. In an SRT task with or without distraction, we found that initially learning a fixed repeating sequence without distraction was expressed by a micro-online learning process where reaction time (RT) progressively improved within learning blocks as adults continuously performed the SRT task. Such online RT improvements, however, vanished when the SRT task was performed under distraction. Despite the detrimental effect of distraction on micro-online RT improvements, we observed offline enhancements in RT following rest intervals of 3 min that emerged to secure sequence learning under distraction. We reasoned that distraction may exert influence on the micro-online and offline learning by mediating the engagement of explicit and implicit memory. Given the offline RT change under distraction, a short rest between learning blocks may be a key player in early perceptual-motor sequence learning under distraction. We thus suggest that future studies investigating the distraction effect on sequence learning need to control the length of rest between learning blocks, while previous research with equivocal interpretations of the distraction effect failed to do so.

Bidirectional competitive interactions between motor memory and declarative memory during interleaved learning

Distinct motor and declarative memory systems are widely thought to compete during memory consolidation and retrieval, yet the nature of their interactions during learning is less clear. Recent studies have suggested motor learning not only depend on implicit motor memory system supporting gradual tuning of responses by feedback but also depend on explicit declarative memory system. However, this competition has been identified when both systems are engaged in learning the same material (motor information), and so competition might be emphasized. We tested whether such competition also occurs when learning involved separate motor memory and declarative information presented distinctly but yet in close temporal proximity. We measured behavioral and brain-activity correlates of motor-declarative competition during learning using a novel task with interleaved motor-adaptation and declarative-learning demands. Despite unrelated motor versus declarative information and temporal segregation, motor learning interfered with declarative learning and declarative learning interfered with motor learning. This reciprocal competition was tightly coupled to corresponding reductions of fMRI activity in motor versus declarative learning systems. These findings suggest that distinct motor and declarative learning systems compete even when they are engaged by system-specific demands in close temporal proximity during memory formation.

Implicit memory associations and video gaming

Background and objectivesThe aim of this study was to develop measures to assess implicit memory associations for video gaming and to examine the relationship between implicit memory associations, video gaming involvement, and problem video gaming. MethodsA survey of online panelists from across Canada was conducted that included 166 problem video gamers who were recruited for participation in a larger study examining the relationship between gambling, video gaming, and collectible card play. Memory associations were assessed using a 10-item measures of word associations and behaviour associations. Video gaming involvement was assessed via self-report of time and frequency of play, and problem video gaming was assessed using the Behavioral Addiction Measure for Video Gaming (BAM-VG). ResultsSignificant Kendall tau-b correlations ranging from 0.297 to 0.405 were found between measures of memory associations and both level of video gaming involvement and problem video gaming. ConclusionsThere is a robust relationship between memory associations for video gaming with level of video gaming involvement and problem video gaming. The results suggest that implicit associations may have utility in the assessment of problem video gaming.

Differences in cognitive performance between informal caregivers and non-caregivers

ABSTRACT Extensive literature exists documenting the relationship between stress and cognition. Caregiving for an individual with Alzheimer’s disease can be aunique and chronic stress experience due to the increasing dependency of the care-recipient as the disease progresses. The current study examines the relationship between stress and cognitive performance in 47 dementia caregivers compared to 47 noncaregiver control participants matched on age, gender, and education. Participants completed measures assessing stress (measured via the Perceived Stress Scale) and seven domains of cognition including episodic memory, working memory, executive functioning, attention, visuospatial processing, processing speed, and implicit memory. Results showed that caregivers had poorer performance than non-caregivers on certain measures of episodic memory, working memory, and executive functioning; while no significant differences were observed on measures of attention, visuospatial processing, processing speed, or implicit memory. In addition, when controlling for general stress, caregiver performance on measures of processing speed and visuospatial processing was also poorer than non-caregivers. By controlling for levels of general stress that may not be related to caregiving, these results show that differences in cognitive performance are unlikely to be explained by general stress alone.

Neuropsychology and advances in memory function.

Recent developments in the functional and neural bases of several aspects of memory are described including long term cortical memory storage, the transition from immediate to permanent memory mediated by medial temporal structures, working memory, memory retrieval, and implicit memory. These are linked to current data on the nature of anterograde and retrograde amnesia in the degenerative diseases, and also to issues in the clinical diagnosis of memory impairments. Understanding the bases of memory can inform the diagnosis of memory impairments in degenerative diseases, and the patterns of impairment seen in the degenerative diseases can help contribute to knowledge of the mechanisms of normal memory.

Postsession Dreaming in Neurofeedback as an Indication of Nondeclarative Learning

Clients may report increased dreaming following neurofeedback sessions. Increased dreaming may not be strictly a side effect of training but may rather be a result of the nondeclarative learning accomplished in training. Research has demonstrated the connection between dreaming and consolidation of memory in both animals and human subjects. Rapid eye movement (REM) deprivation studies have shown the importance of REM sleep to the retention of newly learned skills. Other studies have shown that learning may increase the proportion of REM sleep on subsequent nights. More specifically, REM dreaming may be related to the consolidation of procedural, nondeclarative memory, the type of learning that occurs also during neurofeedback training. When a client reports increased nocturnal dreaming following a neurofeedback session, this may serve as a valuable early indication that their brain is responding to this type of training.

Listening to birdsong reveals basic features of rate perception and aesthetic judgements.

The timing of acoustic events is central to human speech and music. Tempo tends to be slower in aesthetic contexts: rates in poetic speech and music are slower than non-poetic, running speech. We tested whether a general aesthetic preference for slower rates can account for this, using birdsong as a stimulus: it structurally resembles human sequences but is unbiased by their production or processing constraints. When listeners selected the birdsong playback tempo that was most pleasing, they showed no bias towards any range of note rates. However, upon hearing a novel stimulus, listeners rapidly formed a robust, implicit memory of its temporal properties, and developed a stimulus-specific preference for the memorized tempo. Interestingly, tempo perception in birdsong stimuli was strongly determined by individual, internal preferences for rates of 1-2 Hz. This suggests that processing complex sound sequences relies on a default time window, while aesthetic appreciation appears flexible, experience-based and not determined by absolute event rates.

Reward Prediction Error and Declarative Memory.

Learning based on reward prediction error (RPE) was originally proposed in the context of nondeclarative memory. We postulate that RPE may support declarative memory as well. Indeed, recent years have witnessed a number of independent empirical studies reporting effects of RPE on declarative memory. We provide a brief overview of these studies, identify emerging patterns, and discuss open issues such as the role of signed versus unsigned RPEs in declarative learning.

Shadows of Divine Virtue: St. John of the Cross, Implicit Memory, and the Transformation Theory of Infused Cardinal Virtues

The transformation theory postulates that a person’s previously acquired habits are transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. This article contributes to the development of the transformation theory by drawing upon St. John of the Cross and recent developments in neurobiology and psychology, especially in the transformation of memory. Placing these disciplines into a creative dialogue yields a richly descriptive account of the developmental process by which a person grows in grace and virtue toward union with God, and suggests that ethics must pay greater attention to the role of emotion in the cultivation of practical wisdom.