To test the hypothesis that thalamic midline nuclei play a transient role in memory consolidation, we reanalyzed a prospective functional MRI study, contrasting recent and progressively more remote memory retrieval. We revealed a transient thalamic connectivity increase with the hippocampus, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and a…

Numerous studies have suggested a role for ubiquitin-proteasome-mediated protein degradation in learning-dependent synaptic plasticity; however, very little is known about how protein degradation is regulated at the level of the proteasome during memory formation. The ubiquitin-specific protease 14 (USP14) is a proteasomal deubiquitinating enzyme…

New approaches, techniques and tools invented over the last decade and a half have revolutionized the functional dissection of neural circuitry underlying "Drosophila" learning. The new methodologies have been used aggressively by researchers attempting to answer three critical questions about olfactory memories formed with appetitive…

Early studies of memory-impaired patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage led to the view that the hippocampus and related MTL structures are involved in the formation of long-term memory and that immediate memory and working memory are independent of these structures. This traditional idea has recently been revisited. Impaired performance…

Students start to memorize arithmetic facts from early elementary school mathematics activities. Their fluency or lack of fluency with these facts could affect their efforts as they carry out mental calculations as adults. This study investigated participants' levels of brain activation and possible reasons for these levels as they solved…

Recent cognitive research has revealed better source memory performance for familiar relative to novel stimuli. Here we consider two possible explanations for this finding. The source memory advantage for familiar stimuli could arise because stimulus novelty induces attention to stimulus features at the expense of contextual processing, resulting…

Contextual stimulus control over instrumental drug-seeking behavior relies on the reconsolidation of context-response-drug associative memories into long-term memory storage following retrieval-induced destabilization. According to previous studies, the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and dorsal hippocampus (DH) regulate cocaine-related memory…

The main objectives of the study were: to investigate whether training on working memory (WM) could improve fluid intelligence, and to investigate the effects WM training had on neuroelectric (electroencephalography--EEG) and hemodynamic (near-infrared spectroscopy--NIRS) patterns of brain activity. In a parallel group experimental design,…

In recent years, it has been reported that WM (working memory) is concerned with word generation, but many points regarding the relationship between the individual differences of WM capacity and the patterns of word generation remain unclear. This study is to investigate these unclear points by using three types of word fluency task with different…

It is well established that cAMP signaling within neurons plays a major role in the formation of long-term memories--signaling thought to proceed through protein kinase A (PKA). However, here we show that exchange protein activated by cAMP (Epac) is able to enhance the formation of long-term memory in the hippocampus and appears to do so…

Recent findings suggest the involvement of the cerebellum in perceptual and cognitive tasks. Our study investigated whether cerebellar patients show musical priming based on implicit knowledge of tonal-harmonic music. Participants performed speeded phoneme identification on sung target chords, which were either related or less-related to prime…

Pattern completion is the ability to retrieve complete information on the basis of incomplete retrieval cues. Although it has been demonstrated that this cognitive capacity depends on the NMDA receptors (NMDA-Rs) of the hippocampal CA3 region, the role played by these glutamatergic receptors in the pattern completion process has not yet been…

Basic brain function is not a mystery. Given that neuroscientists understand the brain's basic functioning processes, one wonders what their research suggests to teachers of developmental algebra. What if we knew how to teach so as to improve understanding of the algebra taught to developmental algebra students? What if we knew how the brain…

Neurophysiological studies yield contrary results whether attentional problems of patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are related to early visual processing deficits or not. Evoked gamma-band responses (GBRs), being among the first cortical responses occurring as early as 90 ms after visual stimulation in human EEG, have…

Long-term memory (LTM) is enhanced for emotional information, but the influence of stimulus emotionality on short-term memory (STM) is less clear. We examined the electrophysiological correlates of improved visual STM for emotional face identity, focusing on the P1, N170, P3b and N250r event-related potential (ERP) components. These correlates are…