Value-directed remembering. Barbara Knowlton, Ph.D. (UCLA)

Friday, February 25, 3:00pm

please email el1417 at hunter dot cuny dot edu for link.

The ability to prioritize valuable information is critical for the efficient use of memory in daily life. When information is important, we engage more effective encoding mechanisms that can better support later retrieval. I will describe a dual-mechanism framework of value-directed remembering in which both strategic and automatic processes lead to the differential encoding of valuable information and depend on different brain mechanisms. Strategic processes rely on awareness of effective deep encoding strategies that allow younger and healthy older adults to selectively remember important information. This ability relies on specifically engaging left hemisphere regions involved in semantic processing when encoding valuable information. In contrast, some high-value information may also be encoded automatically in the absence of intention to remember and this ability may be impaired in older age. This automatic enhancement of encoding of high-value items may be supported by activation of midbrain dopaminergic projections to the hippocampal region.