Episodic Memory Integration and Interference

Memory for the Associated Words

During the memory recall task on Day 3, participants will be shown a cue word (A) and asked to recall the corresponding associates from Day 1 (B) and Day 2 (C) by typing their response in a blank text field. Participants will also report their confidence in these memories from 1 (not at all confident) to 9 (extremely confident).

fMRI Measured Neural Reactivity (Blood Oxygen-Level Dependent Signal)

fMRI data from Day 1 and Day 2 will be used to perform whole-brain analyses of neural response during encoding, as well as compute neural pattern similarity scores between AB and AC pairs from same- or differently-valenced contexts. Our primary hypothesis is that the similarity of neural patterns in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex will predict memory performance on Day 3.

Source Memory

During the memory recall task on Day 3, participants will also be asked to report which day each paired associate (B \& C) was shown by selecting "1", "2", or "?" if unsure. Additionally, participants will indicate the valence of the image that they remember being associated with each pair from 1 (very negative) to 9 (very positive), as well as their confidence in the remembered valence from 1 (not at all confident) to 9 (extremely confident).

Change in Resting-State Functional Connectivity

Prior work from our lab has shown that increased amygdala-visuosensory connectivity after encoding predicts a memory bias for negatively-valenced stimuli, whereas increased amygdala-prefrontal connectivity predicts a memory bias for positively-valenced stimuli. In the current study, we will also examine whether changes in functional connectivity of the amygdala on Day 2 predict individual differences in memory performance on Day 3 (change = post - pre connectivity strength).