Activity in motor areas while remembering action events

Memory organization of action events and its relationship to memory performance

Previous research yielded inconsistent results regarding the memory organization of self-performed actions. The authors propose that task performance changes the very basis of memory organization. Enactment during study and test (Experiment 1) yielded stronger enactive clustering (based on motor-movement similarities), whereas verbal encoding yielded stronger conceptual clustering (based on semantic-episodic similarities). Enactment enhanced memory quantity and memory accuracy. Both measures increased with enactive clustering under self-performance instructions but with conceptual clustering under verbal instructions. Enactment only during study (Experiment 2) or only during testing (Experiment 3) also enhanced enactive clustering. It is proposed that different conditions affect the relative salience of different types of memory organization and their relative contribution to recall.

Individual differences in memory enhancement by encoding enactment: relationships to adult age and biological factors

Numerous studies have demonstrated an age-related decline in episodic memory performance. However, both younger and older adults benefit from various kinds of encoding support, suggesting that memory functioning remains plastic in older age. The present review is concerned with encoding support in the form of enactment. Memory for simple commands is substantially higher if the commands are enacted during encoding than only read/heard. Such memory enhancement has been demonstrated for many age groups and patient groups, suggesting that it is a general effect. Analysis of the results from 1000 participants ranging in age between 35 and 80 years revealed that about 5% of the participants had low memory performance after enacted encoding and showed no enactment effect. The majority of these were older. Comparisons of participants that did or did not show an enactment effect for a select set of biological and neuropsychological factors provided tentative evidence that a failure to benefit from encoding enactment reflects a dysfunctional motor system. This is in agreement with findings from recent functional neuroimaging studies that associate the enactment effect with motor areas in the brain. Variation in the ability to benefit from encoding enactment is discussed in relation to an age-related decline in dopamine function.

Did I do that? An ERP study of memory for performed and planned actions

Memory for performed and planned actions was measured on source recognition and source recall tests. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the source recognition test to index brain activity during output monitoring. Source identification of performed actions was superior to planned actions and more performed actions were recalled, thereby replicating the enactment effect. Examination of recall errors revealed that more planned than performed actions were omitted. In addition, intrusions and source misattributions were equally likely when recalling planned actions, whereas more misattributions were observed when performed actions were recalled. The ERP data indicated that brain activity elicited by performed actions differed from planned and new actions. Furthermore, activity in the left and right frontal lobes appeared to differ for performed and planned actions indicating that performed actions were evaluated with more heuristic decision processes than both planned and new items. The temporal onset of the frontal ERP differences also suggests that heuristic decision processes begin earlier than systematic processes.

Processing approaches to cognition: the impetus from the levels-of-processing framework

Processing approaches to cognition have a long history, from act psychology to the present, but perhaps their greatest boost was given by the success and dominance of the levels-of-processing framework. We review the history of processing approaches, and explore the influence of the levels-of-processing approach, the procedural approach advocated by Paul Kolers, and the transfer-appropriate processing framework. Processing approaches emphasise the procedures of mind and the idea that memory storage can be usefully conceptualised as residing in the same neural units that originally processed information at the time of encoding. Processing approaches emphasise the unity and interrelatedness of cognitive processes and maintain that they can be dissected into separate faculties only by neglecting the richness of mental life. We end by pointing to future directions for processing approaches.

Reactivation of motor brain areas during explicit memory for actions

Recent functional brain imaging studies have shown that sensory-specific brain regions that are activated during perception/encoding of sensory-specific information are reactivated during memory retrieval of the same information. Here we used PET to examine whether verbal retrieval of action phrases is associated with reactivation of motor brain regions if the actions were overtly or covertly performed during encoding. Compared to a verbal condition, encoding by means of overt as well as covert activity was associated with differential activity in regions in contralateral somatosensory and motor cortex. Several of these regions were reactivated during retrieval. Common to both the overt and covert conditions was reactivation of regions in left ventral motor cortex and left inferior parietal cortex. A direct comparison of the overt and covert activity conditions showed that activation and reactivation of left dorsal parietal cortex and right cerebellum was specific to the overt condition. These results support the reactivation hypothesis by showing that verbal-explicit memory of actions involves areas that are engaged during overt and covert motor activity.