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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on November 11, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(7):1631-1640; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn197
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Brain Oscillations Dissociate between Semantic and Nonsemantic Encoding of Episodic Memories

Simon Hanslmayr, Bernhard Spitzer and Karl-Heinz Bäuml

Department of Experimental Psychology, Regensburg University, Germany

Address correspondence to Simon Hanslmayr, Ph.D., Department of Experimental Psychology, Regensburg University, Universitätsstraße 31, 93040 Regensburg, Germany. Email: simon.hanslmayr{at}psychologie.uni-r.de.

Prior studies, mostly using intentional learning, suggest that power increases in theta and gamma oscillations and power decreases in alpha and beta oscillations are positively related to later remembering. Using incidental learning, this study investigated whether these brain oscillatory subsequent memory effects can be differentiated by encoding task. One group of subjects studied material performing a semantic (deep) encoding task, whereas the other group studied the same material performing a nonsemantic (shallow) encoding task. Successful encoding in the semantic task was related to power decreases in the alpha (8–12 Hz) and beta (12–20 Hz) frequency band, and a power increase in the gamma band (55–70 Hz). In the shallow task, successful encoding was related to a power decrease in the alpha band and a power increase in the theta frequency band (4–7 Hz). A direct comparison of results between the 2 encoding tasks revealed that semantic subsequent memory effects were specifically reflected by power decreases in the beta (0.5–1.5 s) and the alpha frequency band (0.5–1.0 s), whereas nonsemantic subsequent memory effects were specifically reflected by a power increase in the theta frequency band (0.5–1.0 s).

Key Words: alpha • beta • EEG • gamma • strategy • subsequent memory • theta


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