Investigation of Individual Variability in Brain Activity During Episodic Encoding and Retrieval

摘要

The purpose of this study was to test the reliability of self- reported strategy measures for predicting differences in brain activity patterns during a learning and memory task and to compare their predictive value to other measures of cognitive processing and of anatomy. Fifty participants were scanned with functional MRI (fMRI) while they intentionally encoded lists of lowly imageable words and completed subsequent recognition memory tests. After scanning, subjects were asked to report their strategy for each study/test session and to complete a Visualizer-Verbalizer test battery. Our results replicated our previous work showing extensive variability in individual brain activity patterns during episodic memory. Further, we show that self-report measures are not reliable for predicting differences in learning and memory. Instead, other measures of cognitive processing, performance and connectivity properties of the brain were strong predictors.