title: Forced to remember: when memory is biased by salient information.
abstract: The last decades have seen a rapid growing in the attempt to understand the key factors involved in the internal memory representation of the external world. Visual salience have been found to provide a major contribution in predicting the probability for an item/object embedded in a complex setting (i.e., a natural scene) to be encoded and then remembered later on. Here I review the existing literature highlighting the impact of perceptual- (based on low-level sensory features) and semantics-related salience (based on high-level knowledge) on short-term memory representation, along with the neural mechanisms underpinning the interplay between these factors. The available evidence reveal that both perceptual- and semantics-related factors affect attention selection mechanisms during the encoding of natural scenes. Biasing internal memory representation, both perceptual and semantics factors increase the probability to remember high- to the detriment of low-saliency items. The available evidence also highlight an interplay between these factors, with a reduced impact of perceptual-related salience in biasing memory representation as a function of the increasing availability of semantics-related salient information. The neural mechanisms underpinning this interplay involve the activation of different portions of the frontoparietal attention control network. Ventral regions support the assignment of selection/encoding priorities based on high-level semantics, while the involvement of dorsal regions reflects priorities assignment based on low-level sensory features.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Social, Human & Educational Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy; Cognitive Neuroscience Group, Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: valerio.santangelo@unipg.it.
authors.forename: Valerio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Santangelo
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Attention; Natural scenes; Salience; Semantics; Working memory; fMRI