News reports of research into memory July 2001
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July 2001
We have known for a while that recognizing a face is easier when
its owner's
race matches our own. An imaging study now
shows that greater activity in the brain's expert
face-discrimination area occurs when the subject is viewing faces
that belong to members of the same race as their own.
The study appeared in Nature Neuroscience,
4, 845 - 85. Full
reference
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010802/010802-1.html
Previous research has suggested a right-hemisphere superiority
in
face processing, as well as
adult male superiority at spatial and non-verbal skills (also
associated with the right hemisphere of the brain). This study
looked at face recognition and the ability to read facial
expressions in young, pre-pubertal boys and girls. Boys and
girls were equally good at recognizing faces and identifying
expressions, but boys showed significantly greater activity in
the right hemisphere, while the girls' brains were more active
in the left hemisphere. It is speculated that boys tend to
process faces at a global level (right hemisphere), while girls
process faces at a more local level (left hemisphere). This may
mean that females have an advantage in reading fine details of
expression. More importantly, it may be that different
treatments might be appropriate for males and females in the
case of brain injury.
These findings are reported in the July issue of
Neuropsychology.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/aaft-pba062801.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1425000/1425797.stm
Why is it that you can park your car
at a huge mall and find it a few hours later without much
problem, or make your way through a store you have never been to
before? The answer may lie in our ability to build up visual
memories of a scene in a short period of time. A new study
counters current thinking that visual memory is generally poor
and that people quickly forget the details of what they have
seen. It appears that even with very limited visual exposure to
a scene, people are able to build up strong visual memories and,
in fact, their recall of objects in the scene improved with each
exposure. It is suggested these images aren't stored in
short-term or long-term memory, but in medium-term memory, which
lasts for a few minutes and appears to be specific to visual
information as opposed to verbal or semantic information.
"Medium-term memory depends on the visual context of the scene,
such as the background, furniture and walls, which seems to be
key in the ability to keep in mind the location and identity of
objects. These disposable accumulated visual memories can be
recalled in a few minutes if faced with that scene again, but
are discarded in a day or two if the scene is not viewed again
so they don't take up valuable memory space."
The study was published in the July 26 issue of the journal
Nature.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/rtsu-rrf072501.php
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