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Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution

Mnemonic interference refers to the inability to retrieve a goal-relevant memory due to interference from goal-irrelevant memories. Understanding the causes of such interference and how it is overcome has been a central goal in the science of memory for more than a century. Here, we shed new light o...

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Autores principales: Johansson, Roger, Pärnamets, Philip, Bjernestedt, Amanda, Johansson, Mikael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859100/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29556091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23297-3
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author Johansson, Roger
Pärnamets, Philip
Bjernestedt, Amanda
Johansson, Mikael
author_facet Johansson, Roger
Pärnamets, Philip
Bjernestedt, Amanda
Johansson, Mikael
author_sort Johansson, Roger
collection PubMed
description Mnemonic interference refers to the inability to retrieve a goal-relevant memory due to interference from goal-irrelevant memories. Understanding the causes of such interference and how it is overcome has been a central goal in the science of memory for more than a century. Here, we shed new light on this fundamental issue by tracking participants’ pupil response when they encode and retrieve memories in the face of competing goal-irrelevant memories. We show that pupil dilation systematically increased in accordance with interference from competing memory traces when participants retrieved previously learned information. Moreover, our results dissociate two main components in the pupillary response signal: an early component, which peaked in a time window where the pupillary waveform on average had its maximum peak, and a late component, which peaked towards the end of the retrieval task. We provide evidence that the early component is specifically modulated by the cognitive effort needed to handle interference from competing memory traces whereas the late component reflects general task engagement. This is the first demonstration that mnemonic interference resolution can be tracked online in the pupil signal and offers novel insight into the underlying dynamics.
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spelling pubmed-58591002018-03-20 Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution Johansson, Roger Pärnamets, Philip Bjernestedt, Amanda Johansson, Mikael Sci Rep Article Mnemonic interference refers to the inability to retrieve a goal-relevant memory due to interference from goal-irrelevant memories. Understanding the causes of such interference and how it is overcome has been a central goal in the science of memory for more than a century. Here, we shed new light on this fundamental issue by tracking participants’ pupil response when they encode and retrieve memories in the face of competing goal-irrelevant memories. We show that pupil dilation systematically increased in accordance with interference from competing memory traces when participants retrieved previously learned information. Moreover, our results dissociate two main components in the pupillary response signal: an early component, which peaked in a time window where the pupillary waveform on average had its maximum peak, and a late component, which peaked towards the end of the retrieval task. We provide evidence that the early component is specifically modulated by the cognitive effort needed to handle interference from competing memory traces whereas the late component reflects general task engagement. This is the first demonstration that mnemonic interference resolution can be tracked online in the pupil signal and offers novel insight into the underlying dynamics. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5859100/ /pubmed/29556091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23297-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Johansson, Roger
Pärnamets, Philip
Bjernestedt, Amanda
Johansson, Mikael
Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title_full Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title_fullStr Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title_full_unstemmed Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title_short Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
title_sort pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859100/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29556091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23297-3
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