Event-Related Potential (Erp) Studies of the Prestimulus/Stimulus-Related Memory Encoding Activities and the Self-Reference Effect in Episodic Memory(1/2)

Memory is the ability to encode, retain, and retrieve information of experienced events. Encoding isthe first step in the creation of memory and is crucial for the functionally of memory. In studiesexamining the neural correlates of memory encoding, brain activities such as event-relatedpotentials (ERPs) elicited by study items are recorded, categorized, and compared according towhether these items are subsequently remembered or forgotten. The differences in brain activitiesof subsequently remembered and forgotten items are termed as the subsequent memory effect. TheERP subsequent memory effect elicited by the to-be-remembered items is known to be sensitive toa variety of factors, suggesting that memory encoding is not a unitary process but involves a varietyof cognitive operations. Importantly, recent studies found that brain states prior to the onset of theto-be-remembered items also asserts effect on the encoding processes. The mechanisms andfunctional significance of the pre-stimulus encoding activities, which are dissociable from thestimulus-related encoding activities associated with the to-be-remembered items per se, are not yetclear. The current study therefore aims to examine and compare the natures of the prestimulus andstimulus-related encoding activities in episodic memory.A total of six experiments are proposed in the current project. Experiment I will investigate whetherthe prestimulus subsequent memory effect dissociates for recollection-based and familiarity-basedencoding. Experiment II will investigate whether the prestimulus and the stimulus-relatedsubsequent memory effects related to recollection-based encoding, as identified in Experiment I, aresensitive to the quality and quantity of recollection contents. Experiment III aims to examinewhether the prestimulus and stimulus-related subsequent memory effects correlate to the durabilityof episodic memory. Experiment IV will examine whether and how the prestimulus andstimulus-related subsequent memory effects are modulated by the emotional context in which thetask cues and the to-be-remembered items are embedded. Experiments V and VI, based on thefindings of Experiments I to IV, will utilize the subsequent memory paradigm to investigate the roleof self in episodic memory encoding. In addition to examining the functional significance of theprestimulus subsequent memory effects, the current project also seeks to adopt an informationtheory approach to analyze the encoding-related electrophysiological data with the calculation ofmultiscale entropy (MSE). It is expected that the experiments proposed here will provideconvergent evidence, which will advance our understanding of elementary cognitive operationsunderlying the formation of memory encoding and how