Abstract
Recent positron emission tomography (PET) studies have identified neuronal components of widespread novelty-assessment networks in the brain. We propose that the efficacy of encoding on-line information into long-term memory depends on the novelty of the information as determined by these networks, and report a test of this “novelty/encoding” hypothesis. Subjects studied a list of words. Half of the words were “familiar” by virtue of their repeated presentation to the subjects before the study of the critical list; the other half were novel, in that they had not previously been encountered in the experiment. The results conformed to the prediction of the novelty/encoding hypothesis: accuracy of explicit (episodic) recognition was higher for novel than for familiar words.
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Supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (Grant NS17778), by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Grant A8632), and by an endowment by Anne and Max Tanenbaum in support of research in cognitive neuroscience. We thank Eva McGrath for preparation of the manuscript.
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Tulving, E., Kroll, N. Novelty assessment in the brain and long-term memory encoding. Psychon Bull Rev 2, 387–390 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210977
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210977