TY - JOUR A1 - Khader, Patrick H. A1 - Pachur, Thorsten A1 - Meier, Stefanie A1 - Bien, Siegfried A1 - Jost, Kerstin A1 - Roesler, Frank T1 - Memory-based decision-making with heuristics evidence for a controlled activation of memory representations JF - Journal of cognitive neuroscience N2 - Many of our daily decisions are memory based, that is, the attribute information about the decision alternatives has to be recalled. Behavioral studies suggest that for such decisions we often use simple strategies (heuristics) that rely on controlled and limited information search. It is assumed that these heuristics simplify decision-making by activating long-term memory representations of only those attributes that are necessary for the decision. However, from behavioral studies alone, it is unclear whether using heuristics is indeed associated with limited memory search. The present study tested this assumption by monitoring the activation of specific long-term-memory representations with fMRI while participants made memory-based decisions using the "take-the-best" heuristic. For different decision trials, different numbers and types of information had to be retrieved and processed. The attributes consisted of visual information known to be represented in different parts of the posterior cortex. We found that the amount of information required for a decision was mirrored by a parametric activation of the dorsolateral PFC. Such a parametric pattern was also observed in all posterior areas, suggesting that activation was not limited to those attributes required for a decision. However, the posterior increases were systematically modulated by the relative importance of the information for making a decision. These findings suggest that memory-based decision-making is mediated by the dorsolateral PFC, which selectively controls posterior storage areas. In addition, the systematic modulations of the posterior activations indicate a selective boosting of activation of decision-relevant attributes. Y1 - 2011 SN - 0898-929X VL - 23 IS - 11 SP - 3540 EP - 3554 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jost, Kerstin A1 - Khader, Patrick H. A1 - Düsel, Peter A1 - Richter, Franziska R. A1 - Rohde, Kristina B. A1 - Bien, Siegfried A1 - Rösler, Frank T1 - Controlling conflict from interfering long-term memory representations JF - Journal of cognitive neuroscience N2 - Remembering is more than an activation of a memory trace. As retrieval cues are often not uniquely related to one specific memory, cognitive control should come into play to guide selective memory retrieval by focusing on relevant while ignoring irrelevant information. Here, we investigated, by means of EEG and fMRI, how the memory system deals with retrieval interference arising when retrieval cues are associated with two material types (faces and spatial positions), but only one is task-relevant. The topography of slow EEG potentials and the fMRI BOLD signal in posterior storage areas indicated that in such situations not only the relevant but also the irrelevant material becomes activated. This results in retrieval interference that triggers control processes mediated by the medial and lateral PFC, which are presumably involved in biasing target representations by boosting the task-relevant material. Moreover, memory-based conflict was found to be dissociable from response conflict that arises when the relevant and irrelevant materials imply different responses. The two types of conflict show different activations in the medial frontal cortex, supporting the claim of domain-specific prefrontal control systems. Y1 - 2012 SN - 0898-929X VL - 24 IS - 5 SP - 1173 EP - 1190 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Smolka, Eva A1 - Khader, Patrick H. A1 - Wiese, Richard A1 - Zwitserlood, Pienie A1 - Rösler, Frank T1 - Electrophysiological Evidence for the Continuous Processing of Linguistic Categories of Regular and Irregular Verb Inflection in German JF - Journal of cognitive neuroscience N2 - A central question concerning word recognition is whether linguistic categories are processed in continuous or categorical ways, in particular, whether regular and irregular inflection is stored and processed by the same or by distinct systems. Here, we contribute to this issue by contrasting regular (regular stem, regular suffix) with semi-irregular (regular stem, irregular suffix) and irregular (irregular stem, irregular suffix) participle formation in a visual priming experiment on German verb inflection. We measured ERPs and RTs and manipulated the inflectional and meaning relatedness between primes and targets. Inflected verb targets (e. g., leite, "head") were preceded either by themselves, by their participle (geleitet, "headed"), by a semantically related verb in the same inflection as the target (fuhre, "guide") or in the participle form (gefuhrt, "guided"), or by an unrelated verb in the same inflection (nenne, "name"). Results showed that behavioral and ERP priming effects were gradually affected by verb regularity. Regular participles produced a widely distributed frontal and parietal effect, irregular participles produced a small left parietal effect, and semi-irregular participles yielded an effect in-between these two in terms of amplitude and topography. The behavioral and ERP effects further showed that the priming because of participles differs from that because of semantic associates for all verb types. These findings argue for a single processing system that generates participle priming effects for regular, semi-irregular, and irregular verb inflection. Together, the findings provide evidence that the linguistic categories of verb inflection are processed continuously. We present a single-system model that can adequately account for such graded effects. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00384 SN - 0898-929X VL - 25 IS - 8 SP - 1284 EP - 1304 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER -