Temporary and longer term retention of acoustic information.
Though many studies suggest that fine acoustic details fade from memory after 15 s or even less, everyday experience tells us that the voice of a person or a musical instrument can be recognized long after it was last heard. We wished to determine whether tones leave a lasting memory trace using an experimental model of implicit recognition and testing whether exact pitch information can be retrieved even after 30 s. Event-related brain potentials demonstrated the survival of an accurate representation of tone pitch in the auditory cortex. This result provides a link between short-duration buffering and permanent storage of acoustic information.
Winkler
István
I
Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. winkler@cogpsyphy.hu
Korzyukov
Oleg
O
Gumenyuk
Valentina
V
Cowan
Nelson
N
Linkenkaer-Hansen
Klaus
K
Ilmoniemi
d Risto J
dR
Alho
Kimmo
K
Näätänen
Risto
R
D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*