Neural signatures of recognition memory in 10- to 12-month-old infants

Publication date: Available online 19 August 2017 Source:Neuropsychologia Author(s): Szilvia Linnert, Brigitta Tóth, Márton Nagy, Eugenio Parise, Ildikó Király Understanding memory mechanisms is crucial in the study of infant social and cognitive development. Here, we show that the Nc ERP component, known to reflect frequency-related attentional and/or memory processes, is a good candidate to investigate infant recognition memory. Previous paradigms have only investigated the effect of frequency during on-line stimulus presentation, but not during stimulus encoding. In this paper, we present a novel method for measuring the neural correlates of recognition memory and the ‘degree’ of familiarity in 10- to 12-month-old infants. During a familiarization phase, two images were presented frequently, while another two images were presented infrequently to the infants. In the test phase, the infrequent familiar, the frequent familiar, and the novel stimuli, were all presented with equal probability. We found larger Nc amplitudes following the familiar stimuli compared to the novel ones. The ‘degree’ of familiarity, on the other hand, did not modulate the Nc amplitude. These results can only be explained with memory-related processes, since in our paradigm the on-line presentation frequency did not vary. Furthermore, the lack of familiarization frequency effect suggests that the Nc might be a neural correlate of declarative memory.

Source: Neuropsychologia - August 20, 2017 Category: Neurology Source Type: research