The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory Distortion

Memory distortion occurs in the laboratory and in everyday life. This article focuses on false recognition, a common type of memory distortion in which individuals incorrectly claim to have encountered a novel object or event. By considering evidence from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and electrophysiology, we address three questions. (1) Are there patterns of neural activity that can distinguish between true and false recognition? (2) Which brain regions contribute to false recognition? (3) Which brain regions play a role in monitoring or reducing false recognition? Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies suggest that sensory activity is greater for true recognition compared to false recognition. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging results indicate that the hippocampus and several cortical regions contribute to false recognition. Evidence from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and electrophysiology implicates the prefrontal cortex in retrieval monitoring that can limit the rate of false recognition.

[1]  D. Schacter,et al.  Perceptually based false recognition of novel objects in amnesia : Effects of category size and similarity to category prototypes , 1999 .

[2]  Ken A Paller,et al.  Neural Evidence That Vivid Imagining Can Lead to False Remembering , 2004, Psychological science.

[3]  R T Knight,et al.  Contributions of prefrontal cortex to recognition memory: electrophysiological and behavioral evidence. , 1999, Neuropsychology.

[4]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Suppressing False Recognition in Younger and Older Adults: The Distinctiveness Heuristic ☆ ☆☆ ★ , 1999 .

[5]  Anthony D Wagner,et al.  Executive Control during Episodic Retrieval Multiple Prefrontal Processes Subserve Source Memory , 2002, Neuron.

[6]  E. Wilding.  In what way does the parietal ERP old/new effect index recollection? , 2000, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[7]  Michael D. Rugg,et al.  The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in Recognition Memory and Memory for Source: An fMRI Study , 1999, NeuroImage.

[8]  E. Loftus.  Desperately seeking memories of the first few years of childhood: the reality of early memories. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[9]  Daniel L Schacter,et al.  Semantic versus phonological false recognition in aging and Alzheimer’s disease , 2003, Brain and Cognition.

[10]  J. Deese.  On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. , 1959, Journal of experimental psychology.

[11]  Alex Martin,et al.  Properties and mechanisms of perceptual priming , 1998, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[12]  J. Ward,et al.  Inappropriate association of semantics and context to novel stimuli can give rise to the false recognition of unfamiliar people , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[13]  J M Watson,et al.  Cross-modal semantic and homograph priming in healthy young, healthy old, and in Alzheimer's disease individuals , 1999, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[14]  B. Knowlton,et al.  Remembering episodes: a selective role for the hippocampus during retrieval , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[15]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Brain Potentials Reflect Behavioral Differences in True and False Recognition , 2001, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[16]  Armin Schnider,et al.  Spontaneous confabulation, reality monitoring, and the limbic system — a review , 2001, Brain Research Reviews.

[17]  S. Petersen,et al.  Memory's echo: vivid remembering reactivates sensory-specific cortex. , 2000, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  K. McDermott,et al.  Factors that determine false recall: A multiple regression analysis , 2001, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[19]  H. Roediger.  Implicit memory in normal human subjects , 1993 .

[20]  Valerie Treyer,et al.  Subcortical Loop Activation during Selection of Currently Relevant Memories , 2003, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[21]  Paul M. Corballis,et al.  Hemispheric Organization of Visual Memories , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[22]  Asher Koriat,et al.  Monitoring and control processes in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy , 1996 .

[23]  D. Schacter,et al.  The effect of retrieval instructions on false recognition: exploring the nature of the gist memory impairment in amnesia , 2002, Neuropsychologia.

[24]  R. Buckner,et al.  Functional Dissociation among Components of Remembering: Control, Perceived Oldness, and Content , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[25]  Mieke Verfaellie,et al.  Elevated false recognition in patients with frontal lobe damage is neither a general nor a unitary phenomenon. , 2004, Neuropsychology.

[26]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Specificity of priming: a cognitive neuroscience perspective , 2004, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[27]  Wilma Koutstaal,et al.  Older Adults Encode—But Do Not Always Use—Perceptual Details , 2003, Psychological science.

[28]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Evaluating characteristics of false memories: Remember/know judgments and memory characteristics questionnaire compared , 1997, Memory & cognition.

[29]  T. Shallice,et al.  Neuroimaging evidence for dissociable forms of repetition priming. , 2000, Science.

[30]  T. Penney,et al.  Event related brain potentials and illusory memories: the effects of differential encoding. , 2001, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[31]  G. Talland.  AN AMNESIC PATIENT'S DISAVOWAL OF HIS OWN RECALL PERFORMANCE, AND ITS ATTRIBUTION TO THE INTERVIEWER. , 1965, Psychiatria et neurologia.

[32]  H L Roediger,et al.  Associative false recognition occurs without strategic criterion shifts , 2001, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[33]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Object vision and spatial vision: two cortical pathways , 1983, Trends in Neurosciences.

[34]  R. Dolan,et al.  Differential activation of the prefrontal cortex in successful and unsuccessful memory retrieval. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[35]  Remo Guidieri.  Res , 1995, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics.

[36]  C. J. McGrath,et al.  Effect of exchange rate return on volatility spill-over across trading regions , 2012 .

[37]  V. Reyna,et al.  Memory independence and memory interference in cognitive development. , 1993, Psychological review.

[38]  H. Roediger.  MEMORY ILLUSIONS , 2019, Experiencing the Impossible.

[39]  L. Deecke,et al.  Event-related potential correlates of false recognitions of faces , 1999, Neuroscience Letters.

[40]  Monica Fabiani,et al.  True But Not False Memories Produce a Sensory Signature in Human Lateralized Brain Potentials , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[41]  P W Burgess,et al.  Confabulation and the control of recollection. , 1996, Memory.

[42]  D. Schacter,et al.  Perceptual false recognition in Alzheimer's disease. , 2001, Neuropsychology.

[43]  Michael D. Rugg,et al.  Dissociation of the neural correlates of implicit and explicit memory , 1998, Nature.

[44]  Axel Mecklinger,et al.  ERP correlates of true and false recognition after different retention delays: stimulus- and response-related processes. , 2003, Psychophysiology.

[45]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  When True Recognition Suppresses False Recognition: Evidence from Amnesic Patients , 1998, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[46]  D. Schacter,et al.  The Neuropsychology of Memory Illusions: False Recall and Recognition in Amnesic Patients , 1996 .

[47]  T. Shallice,et al.  Confabulation with a selective descriptor process impairment , 1999 .

[48]  When false recognition is unopposed by true recognition: gist-based memory distortion in Alzheimer's disease. , 2000 .

[49]  D L Schacter,et al.  Suppression of false recognition in Alzheimer's disease and in patients with frontal lobe lesions. , 2002, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[50]  V. Reyna,et al.  Fuzzy-trace theory: An interim synthesis , 1995 .

[51]  Desperately seeking memories of the first few years of childhood: the reality of early memories. , 1993 .

[52]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  False recognition after a right frontal lobe infarction: Memory for general and specific information , 1997, Neuropsychologia.

[53]  Tim Curran,et al.  Late frontal brain potentials distinguish true and false recognition , 2003, Neuroreport.

[54]  Yoko Okado,et al.  Neural processing associated with true and false memory retrieval , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[55]  D. Schacter,et al.  Can medial temporal lobe regions distinguish true from false? An event-related functional MRI study of veridical and illusory recognition memory , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[56]  B. Underwood.  FALSE RECOGNITION PRODUCED BY IMPLICIT VERBAL RESPONSES. , 1965, Journal of experimental psychology.

[57]  D. G. Payne,et al.  Effective warnings in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory paradigm: the role of identifiability. , 2003, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[58]  M. Posner,et al.  On the genesis of abstract ideas. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[59]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Awareness of deficit after brain injury : clinical and theoretical issues , 1991 .

[60]  Anthony D Wagner,et al.  Memory orientation and success: separable neurocognitive components underlying episodic recognition , 2003, Neuropsychologia.

[61]  Andy C. H. Lee,et al.  Failing to get the gist: reduced false recognition of semantic associates in semantic dementia. , 2005, Neuropsychology.

[62]  Jamie Ward,et al.  False recognition after frontal lobe damage: The role of encoding factors , 1999 .

[63]  E. Tulving,et al.  Event-related brain potential correlates of two states of conscious awareness in memory. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[64]  T Shallice,et al.  Preserved recall versus impaired recognition. A case study. , 1990, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[65]  B Opitz,et al.  Conscious recollection and illusory recognition: an event‐related fMRI study , 2001, The European journal of neuroscience.

[66]  S. Rapcsak,et al.  Neuropsychological mechanisms of false facial recognition following frontal lobe damage , 1999 .

[67]  E F Loftus,et al.  Creating false memories. , 1997, Scientific American.

[68]  T. Curran,et al.  Using ERPs to dissociate recollection from familiarity in picture recognition. , 2003, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[69]  G. Glaeser,et al.  Prototypes , 2021, Function and Class in Linguistic Description.

[70]  L. Squire,et al.  The Neuropsychology of Memory , 1990 .

[71]  R. Henson.  Neuroimaging studies of priming , 2003, Progress in Neurobiology.

[72]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  The Similarity of Brain Activity Associated with True and False Recognition Memory Depends On Test Format , 1997 .

[73]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Neuroanatomical Correlates of Veridical and Illusory Recognition Memory: Evidence from Positron Emission Tomography , 1996, Neuron.

[74]  D. J. Felleman,et al.  Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. , 1991, Cerebral cortex.

[75]  D. Schacter,et al.  Priming and the Brain , 1998, Neuron.

[76]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  False recognition in younger and older adults: Exploring the characteristics of illusory memories , 1997, Memory & cognition.

[77]  D. Schacter,et al.  False recognition and the right frontal lobe: A case study , 1996, Neuropsychologia.

[78]  Lars-Göran Nilsson,et al.  Reactivation of Motor Brain Areas during Explicit Memory for Actions , 2001, NeuroImage.

[79]  Georgios Nakos,et al.  Monitoring , 1976, Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

[80]  L. Deecke,et al.  False recognition in a verbal memory task: an event-related potential study. , 2000, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[81]  K. McDermott,et al.  Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. , 1995 .

[82]  A. Dale,et al.  Late Onset of Anterior Prefrontal Activity during True and False Recognition: An Event-Related fMRI Study , 1997, NeuroImage.

[83]  M. Rugg,et al.  Recognition memory for new associations: electrophysiological evidence for the role of recollection , 1998, Neuropsychologia.

[84]  Marcia K. Johnson.  Reality monitoring: Evidence from confabulation in organic brain disease patients. , 1991 .

[85]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Is memory schematic , 1983 .

[86]  Henry L. Roediger,et al.  Tricks of Memory , 2000 .

[87]  D. Schacter,et al.  Illusory memories in amnesic patients: conceptual and perceptual false recognition. , 1997, Neuropsychology.

[88]  E. Tulving,et al.  Reactivation of encoding-related brain activity during memory retrieval. , 2000, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[89]  Ken A. Paller,et al.  Neural events that underlie remembering something that never happened , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[90]  F. Bartlett,et al.  Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology , 1932 .

[91]  S. Rapcsak,et al.  False Recognition of Unfamiliar Faces Following Right Hemisphere Damage: Neuropsychological and Anatomical Observations , 1996, Cortex.

[92]  D. Schacter.  The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. , 1999, The American psychologist.

[93]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Brain regions associated with retrieval of structurally coherent visual information , 1995, Nature.

[94]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers , 2001 .

[95]  D. Schacter,et al.  A sensory signature that distinguishes true from false memories , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[96]  T. Shallice,et al.  Right prefrontal cortex and episodic memory retrieval: a functional MRI test of the monitoring hypothesis. , 1999, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[97]  Mark E Wheeler,et al.  Functional-anatomic correlates of remembering and knowing , 2004, NeuroImage.

[98]  Lynne M. Reder,et al.  The effect of distinctive visual information on false recognition , 2003 .

[99]  G. Muehllehner,et al.  Positron emission tomography , 2006, Physics in medicine and biology.

[100]  H. Roediger,et al.  Associative Processes in False Recall and False Recognition , 1997 .

[101]  Morris Moscovitch,et al.  FALSE RECALL AND FALSE RECOGNITION: AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECTS OF SELECTIVE AND COMBINED LESIONS TO THE MEDIAL TEMPORAL LOBE/DIENCEPHALON AND FRONTAL LOBE STRUCTURES , 1999 .

[102]  Alan J. Parkin,et al.  Pathological False Alarm Rates Following Damage to the Left Frontal Cortex , 1996, Brain and Cognition.

[103]  M. Bar,et al.  Cortical Analysis of Visual Context , 2003, Neuron.

[104]  M. Rugg,et al.  An event-related potential study of recognition memory with and without retrieval of source. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[105]  Jason P. Mitchell,et al.  The Seven Sins of Memory , 2003, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[106]  V. Reyna,et al.  When Things That Were Never Experienced Are Easier To “Remember” Than Things That Were , 1998 .

[107]  Jason M. Blackwell,et al.  Memory Illusions: Recalling, Recognizing, and Recollecting Events that Never Occurred , 1996 .

[108]  豊田 弘司.  虚再認(false recognition)研究の展望 , 1984 .

[109]  Armin Schnider,et al.  Spontaneous confabulators fail to suppress currently irrelevant memory traces , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[110]  D L Schacter,et al.  Retrieval conditions and false recognition: Testing the distinctiveness heuristic , 2001, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[111]  E F Loftus,et al.  Qualities of the unreal. , 1986, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[112]  E Tulving,et al.  Priming and human memory systems. , 1990, Science.

[113]  D. Schacter,et al.  The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory. , 1998, Annual review of psychology.

[114]  J. Ward,et al.  False recognition of unfamiliar people: "Seeing film stars everywhere" , 1999 .