The Temporal Dynamics of Schema-dependent Memory Processing.
Research suggests that experiences that either strongly affirm or strongly contradict our pre-existing schematic knowledge tend to be better remembered than events that are unrelated to such knowledge. Neurocognitive models propose that these ‘schema-effects’ in memory are mediated by interactions between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and medial temporal lobes (MTL). However, the precise nature of these interactions in the generation of schema-effects has yet to be resolved. This project aims to address this issue by combining magnetoencephalography (MEG) with multivariate decoding techniques and measures of functional connectivity to study the temporal dynamics of the PFC-MTL circuit during the processing of schema-relevant information.