REJECTING SIMILAR STIMULI IS DIFFERENT FROM REJECTING NONSIMILAR STIMULI IN ITEM RECOGNITION: EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL EVIDENCE

Authors

Mathieu B. BRODEUR^1,2,*, Ran SHU³

¹ Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
² Douglas Mental Health University Institute, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
³ Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

ABSTRACT

In everyday life, detecting new items often requires memory retrieval to avoid confounding them with similar items. This study examined whether there are differences between the electrophysiological indexes of memory recollection used to correctly detect novel and to recognize studied items. The EEG of 17 participants was recorded while completing two episodic memory experiments with photos of objects. In Experiment 1, the new objects were unrelated to the studied objects and thus initiated no memory recollection. In Experiment 2, the new objects were lures which could only be correctly rejected following memory recollection of the studied objects for comparison. Classic FN400 and parietal old/new effects were found when comparing old objects with new unrelated objects. When new objects were lures (objects similar to the old ones), the FN400 effect disappeared, the parietal old/new effect remained present, and a frontal old/new effect emerged. Rejecting similar stimuli thus activates brain regions that are different from those involved in rejecting nonsimilar stimuli.

KEYWORDS: memory, false recognition, similarity, event-related potentials, fn400, recollection

PAGES:55-64

doi:10.24193/cbb.2017.21.04

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