Poster No:
1088
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Ao Li1, Xuhao Shao1, Bi Zhu1
Institutions:
1State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
First Author:
Ao Li
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University
Beijing, China
Co-Author(s):
Xuhao Shao
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University
Beijing, China
Bi Zhu
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University
Beijing, China
Introduction:
The misinformation effect refers to changes in an eyewitness's memory of an original event due to exposure to post-event misinformation (Loftus et al., 1974; Loftus, 2005). It involves three stages. A witness first saw an event, then read or heard narratives about this event (including some misinformation), and finally underwent a memory test based on what he or she saw in the original event. False memory from misinformation refers to the report of misinformation during the memory test of the original event. Previous research has investigated the impact of visually presented text-based misinformation on eyewitness memory of the original event and its cross-stage neural pattern similarity (Okado & Stark, 2005; Shao et al., 2023). However, it is unclear about the neural representations of the original event when hearing misinformation. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neural pattern similarity analysis, the current study investigated the cross-stage neural pattern similarity between the original-event image and the post-event auditory misinformation, and then compares the neural representations between true and false memories.
Methods:
In this study, 30 college students viewed 6 events with 300 original-event images (e.g., an image depicting a man taking a blue candy box) and then listened to 300 post-event narratives (e.g., an AI-generated auditory misinformation "the man took a red candy box") in the fMRI scanner. Finally, they completed the memory test for the original event containing 156 questions (e.g., "What color of candy box did the man take in the original event?"). True memory, false memory, and foil memory refer to trials in which participants selected the original information (blue), misinformation (red), and unpresented information (white), respectively. MRI scans were performed on a 3.0T Siemens Prisma scanner with a 20-channel head-neck coil. The fMRIPrep and FSL were used for image preprocessing and analysis. Using the representational similarity analysis, the neural pattern similarity between the original-event and post-event stages (OP), were calculated for each of two memory types (i.e., true memory and false memory), for the corresponding items and the non-corresponding items in the same event, separately. We conducted the whole-brain searchlight analysis to identify brain regions that show differences in neural representations between true and false memories.
Results:
The behavioral results showed that the false memory rate was higher than the foil memory rate, indicating a significant misinformation effect. For true memory, neural pattern similarity between the original-event image and the post-event misinformation for the corresponding items was higher than that for the non-corresponding items in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal lobe, whereas the neural pattern similarity for the corresponding items was lower than that for the non-corresponding items in bilateral occipital cortex. However, no such differences were found for false memory.
Conclusions:
When a person hears misinformation, if he or she can reinstate the original event with gist representations in the frontoparietal cortex (i.e., a semantic match: "the man took a candy box") and verbatim representations in sensory cortex (i.e., a visual mismatch: hearing "a red candy box" and reactivating an image of "a blue candy box"), then he or she will be more likely to resist the misinformation. This study supports and extends the sensory reactivation and fuzzy-trace theories. It may contribute to the understanding of the reconstructive nature of human memory and its application in the legal system.
Learning and Memory:
Long-Term Memory (Episodic and Semantic) 1
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI 2
Keywords:
Other - memory; misinformation effect; visual; auditory; fMRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Loftus, E. F. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: an example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585-589.
Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361-366.
Okado, Y. (2005). Neural activity during encoding predicts false memories created by misinformation. Learning & Memory, 12(1), 3-11.
Shao, X. (2023). Cross-stage neural pattern similarity in the hippocampus predicts false memory derived from post-event inaccurate information. Nature Communications, 14(1), 2299.