Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on March 16, 2005
Cerebral Cortex 2005 15(12):1992-2002; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi074
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The Oscillatory Dynamics of Recognition Memory and its Relationship to Event-related Responses
Department of Neurology II, Otto von Guericke University, Leipziger Strasse 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany
Address correspondence to Emrah Düzel, Klinik für Neurologie II, Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. Email: emrah.duezel{at}medizin.uni-magdeburg.de.
The large-scale neural dynamics underlying higher cognitive processes are characterized by at least three types of stimulus-response: (i) the resetting of ongoing oscillatory brain activity without concomitant changes in response amplitude (phase alignment response); (ii) the addition of response amplitude to the ongoing brain activity in a time-locked manner (evoked response); and (iii) the addition of response amplitude that is not time-locked (induced response). Recent animal studies identified evoked responses as a characteristic neural response during stimulus perception but leave open the possibility that higher cognition, such as memory, is characterized more predominantly by phase alignment and/or induced responses. Using whole-head single-trial magnetoencephalography data from eight healthy adults, we show that all three types of response are related to the discrimination of old and new stimuli in a visual word recognition memory paradigm. In four subjects, single-trial evoked responses were the single constituents of event-related field old/new differences that have been previously related to familiarity-based and recollection-based recognition memory. While these data show that the oscillatory brain dynamics underlying recognition memory are characterized by a complex mix of three types of stimulus-response, they also clearly implicate evoked responses in higher cognitive processes such as recognition memory.
Key Words: evoked response MEG phase resetting single-trial analyses