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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Neurophysiological Basis Of Sleep’S Function On Memory And Cognition, Rebecca M. C. Spencer Jan 2013

Neurophysiological Basis Of Sleep’S Function On Memory And Cognition, Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

A wealth of recent studies supports a function of sleep on memory and cognitive processing. At a physiological level, sleep supports memory in a number of ways including neural replay and enhanced plasticity in the context of reduced ongoing input. This paper presents behavioral evidence for sleep’s role in selective remembering and forgetting of declarative memories, in generalization of these memories, and in motor skill consolidation. Recent physiological data reviewed suggests how these behavioral changes might be supported by sleep. Importantly, in reviewing these findings, an integrated view of how distinct sleep stages uniquely contribute to memory processing emerges. This …


Interaction Of Sleep And Emotional Content On The Production Of False Memories, Shannon Mckeon, Edward F. Pace-Schott, Rebecca M. C. Spencer Nov 2012

Interaction Of Sleep And Emotional Content On The Production Of False Memories, Shannon Mckeon, Edward F. Pace-Schott, Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Sleep benefits veridical memories, resulting in superior recall relative to off-line intervals spent awake. Sleep also increases false memory recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Given the suggestion that emotional veridical memories are prioritized for consolidation over sleep, here we examined whether emotion modulates sleep’s effect on false memory formation. Participants listened to semantically related word lists lacking a critical lure representing each list’s ‘‘gist.’’ Free recall was tested after 12 hours containing sleep or wake. The Sleep group recalled more studied words than the Wake group but only for emotionally neutral lists. False memories of both negative and neutral …


Processing Of Emotional Reactivity And Emotional Memory Over Sleep, Bengi Baran, Edward F. Pace-Schott, Callie Ericson, Rebecca M. C. Spencer Jan 2012

Processing Of Emotional Reactivity And Emotional Memory Over Sleep, Bengi Baran, Edward F. Pace-Schott, Callie Ericson, Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Sleep enhances memories, particularly emotional memories. As such, it has been suggested that sleep deprivation may reduce post-traumatic stress disorder. This presumes that emotional memory consolidation is paralleled by a reduction in emotional reactivity, an association that has not yet been examined. In the present experiment, we utilized an incidental memory task in humans and obtained valence and arousal ratings during two sessions separated either by 12 hours of daytime wake or 12 hours including overnight sleep. Recognition accuracy was greater following sleep relative to wake for both negative and neutral pictures. While emotional reactivity to negative pictures was greatly …


Neural Substrates Of Impaired Sensorimotor Timing In Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Eve M. Valera Phd, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Thomas A. Zeffero Md, Phd, Nikos Makris Md, Phd, Thomas J. Spencer Md, Stephen V. Faraone Phd, Joseph Biederman Md, Larry J. Seidman Phd Aug 2010

Neural Substrates Of Impaired Sensorimotor Timing In Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Eve M. Valera Phd, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Thomas A. Zeffero Md, Phd, Nikos Makris Md, Phd, Thomas J. Spencer Md, Stephen V. Faraone Phd, Joseph Biederman Md, Larry J. Seidman Phd

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Background—Timing abilities are critical to the successful management of everyday activities and personal safety, and timing abnormalities have been argued to be fundamental to impulsiveness, a core symptom of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Despite substantial evidence of timing deficits in ADHD youth, only two studies have explicitly examined timing in ADHD adults, and only at the supra-second time-scale. Also, the neural substrates of these deficits are largely unknown for both youth and adults with ADHD. The present study examined sub-second sensorimotor timing and its neural substrates in ADHD adults. Methods—Using fMRI, we examined paced and unpaced finger tapping in a sample …


Atypical Neural Functions Underlying Phonological Processing And Silent Rehearsal In Children Who Stutter, Christine Weber-Fox, John E. Spruill Iii, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Anne Smith Mar 2008

Atypical Neural Functions Underlying Phonological Processing And Silent Rehearsal In Children Who Stutter, Christine Weber-Fox, John E. Spruill Iii, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Anne Smith

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Phonological processing was examined in school-age children who stutter (CWS) by assessing their performance and recording event related brain potentials (ERPs) in a visual rhyming task. CWS had lower accuracy on rhyming judgments, but the cognitive processes that mediate the comparisons of the phonological representations of words, as indexed by the rhyming effect (RE) ERP, were similar for the stuttering and normally fluent groups. Thus the lower behavioral accuracy of rhyming judgments by the CWS could not be attributed to that particular stage of processing. Instead, the neural functions for processes preceding the RE, indexed by the N400 and CNV …


Cerebellar Activation During Discrete And Not Continuous Timed Movements: An Fmri Study, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Timothy Verstynen, Matthew Brett, Richard Ivry Jun 2007

Cerebellar Activation During Discrete And Not Continuous Timed Movements: An Fmri Study, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Timothy Verstynen, Matthew Brett, Richard Ivry

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Individuals with cerebellar lesions are impaired in the timing of repetitive movements that involve the concatenation of discrete events such as tapping a finger. In contrast, these individuals perform comparably to controls when producing continuous repetitive movements. Based on this, we have proposed that the cerebellum plays a key role in event timing—the representation of the temporal relationship between salient events related to the movement (e.g., flexion onset or contact with a response surface). In the current study, we used fMRI to examine cerebellar activity during discrete and continuous rhythmic movements. Participants produced rhythmic movements with the index finger either …


Age-Related Decline Of Sleep-Dependent Consolidation, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Avin M. Gouw, Richard B. Ivry Jan 2007

Age-Related Decline Of Sleep-Dependent Consolidation, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Avin M. Gouw, Richard B. Ivry

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

Sleep-dependent memory consolidation is observed following motor skill learning: Performance improvements are greater over a 12-h period containing sleep relative to an equivalent interval without sleep. Here we examined whether older adults exhibit sleep-dependent consolidation on a sequence learning task. Participants were trained on one of two sequence learning tasks. Performance was assessed after a 12-h break that included sleep and after a 12-h break that did not include sleep. Older and younger adults showed similar degrees of initial learning. However, performance of the older adults did not improve following sleep, providing evidence that sleep-dependent consolidation is diminished with age.


Timing Variability In Circle Drawing And Tapping: Probing The Relationship Between Event And Emergent Timing, Howard N. Zelaznik, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Richard B. Ivry, Alex Baria, Melissa Bloom, Lisa Dolansky, Shannon Justice, Kristen Patterson, Emily Whetter Sep 2005

Timing Variability In Circle Drawing And Tapping: Probing The Relationship Between Event And Emergent Timing, Howard N. Zelaznik, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Richard B. Ivry, Alex Baria, Melissa Bloom, Lisa Dolansky, Shannon Justice, Kristen Patterson, Emily Whetter

Rebecca M. C. Spencer

R. Ivry, R. M. Spencer, H. N. Zelaznik, and J. Diedrichsen (2002) have proposed a distinction between timed movements in which a temporal representation is part of the task goal (event timing) and those in which timing properties are emergent. The issue addressed in the present experiment was how timing in conditions conducive to emergent timing becomes established. According to what the authors term the transformation hypothesis, timing initially requires an event-based representation when the temporal goal is defined externally (e.g., by a metronome), but over the first few movement cycles, control processes become established that allow timing to become …