Toward a theory of episodic memory: The frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness.

Abstract

Adult humans are capable of remembering prior events by mentally traveling back in time to re-experience those events. In this review, the authors discuss this and other related capabilities, considering evidence from such diverse sources as brain imaging, neuropsychological experiments, clinical observations, and developmental psychology. The evidence supports a preliminary theory of episodic remembering, which holds that the prefrontal cortex plays a critical, supervisory role in empowering healthy adults with autonoetic consciousness-the capacity to mentally represent and become aware of subjective experiences in the past, present, and future. When a rememberer mentally travels back in subjective time to re-experience his or her personal past, the result is an act of retrieval from episodic memory.

Acute Effects of Ketamine on Memory Systems and Psychotic Symptoms in Healthy Volunteers

“…This supports the notion that the NMDA receptor is important in episodic memory in humans. Neuroimaging studies suggest that these deficits in source memory may be a function of hyperactivation of the prefrontal cortex and underactivation of the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe structures, as these areas are associated with source memory (Wheeler et al, 1997) and this pattern of neural activity has been found following ketamine administration (Breier et al, 1997;Vollenweider et al, 1997), Interestingly, the high-dose ketamine group, while impaired, were still performing well above chance levels on the source memory task. Many previous studies have found recognition memory to be at chance following a similar dose of ketamine to that used in this study (eg Malhotra et al, 1996;Hetem et al, 2000).…”

Impaired capacity for autonoetic reliving during autobiographical event recall in mild Alzheimer's disease

“…Piolino et al (2002) proposed that "in ageing, a part that makes memory 'truly' episodic, namely myriad details, is effectively lost" (p.252). However, the retrieval of episodic ABMs involves much more than the recollection of personally relevant details, and as recent studies have shown, a complex interplay of phenomenological factors facilitates the rich subjective re-experiencing of the original event (Addis et al, 2004) via autonoetic consciousness (Tulving, 2002;Wheeler et al, 1997). Piolino et al (2006) demonstrated that with increasing age, the ability to consciously recollect many specific events and relive the context in which they occurred deteriorates, with evidence for a process of semanticisation with time interval (Cermak, 1984;Conway et al, 1997).…”

“…Piolino and colleagues used the "field/observer" visual imagery paradigm (Nigro and Neisser, 1983) to distinguish between episodic and semantic aspects of ABM and found that in healthy ageing (Piolino et al, 2006), Alzheimer's disease (Piolino et al, 2004) and TBI (Piolino et al, 2007) the "observer" perspective is often adopted, suggesting that the memory has been transformed out of the first person perspective and reconstructed rather than reexperienced. To date, mounting evidence points towards several critical features of episodic memory including the recency of memories (Piefke et al, 2003;Piolino et al, 2003b), the level of contextual detail (Levine et al, 2002;Moscovitch et al, 1999), emotional re-experiencing (Piefke et al, 2003;Sharot et al, 2004), the role of visual imagery (D'Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2006;Irish et al, 2008), and the personal significance of the retrieved event (Addis et al, 2004;Wheeler et al, 1997).…”

Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.

“…As with our review of the literature on the physical self, we focus specifically on research relevant to the question of whether the self is special. More general reviews of related areas have addressed episodic memory and the frontal lobes (Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997), self as an organization of knowledge (Greenwald, 1980), autobiographical memory (Conway & Rubin, 1993), and the development of autobiographical memory (Fitzgerald, 1986;Howe & Courage, 1997). Symons and Johnson (1997) provide a review of the literature on the self-reference effect in memory, which is discussed below in the context of several of the studies in this area.…”