Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The role of the Hippocampus in episodic memory has been fervently discussed for a long time. A new model, titled ”Competitive Trace Theory”, holds that the role of this temporal lobe structure is to “contextualize” memory. This is achieved by the establishing of new, multi-modal memory traces every time the memory is reactivated. These distinct memory patterns all share a mutual component of the memory, yet in addition they contain unique patterns of activity, which compete with each other in order to be consolidated. The neocortex however, slowly changes in response to frequently occurring invariant information, and is also the final site of consolidation. Observing this, I tested the hypothesis that: the ability to correctly reject a similar (rotated) lure during test should be worse if the targets during encoding were variant (gradually rotated) rather than invariant (targets repeated unaltered). This was tested using a modified version of the Behavioural Pattern Separation – Object Task. Subjects (N = 33) engaged in the encoding of 200 objects for three trials and were subsequently tested on 50 identical, 50 new, and 100 similar objects. The task was to correctly identify these as “old”, “new” and “similar” respectively. The results confirm the hypothesis as the probability of falsely responding “old” to a lure was higher given variant encoding. The findings are discussed in relation to the aforementioned theory, and current neurobiological models of memory. The paper determines the cause of these results to remain inconclusive, until neurophysiological findings corroborate them.
Author: Sebastian Dohm-Hansen
Language: Swedish
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2110320174