Leveraging Prior Knowledge to Support Short-term Memory: Exploring the Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex.

It is well established that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a critical role in memory consolidation and the retrieval of remote long-term memories. Recent evidence suggests that the vmPFC also supports rapid neocortical learning and consolidation over shorter timescales, particularly when novel events align with stored knowledge. One mechanism by which the vmPFC has been proposed to support this learning is by integrating congruent information into existing neocortical knowledge during memory encoding.

Automaticity and Flexibility of S-R Retrieval During Priming.

Learned associations between stimuli and responses (S-R associations) make important contributions to behavioral and neural priming. The current study investigated the automaticity and flexibility of these S-R associations and whether the global task context in which they occur modulates the impact of S-R retrieval on priming. Participants engaged in a semantic repetition priming task in which S-R retrieval is known to influence priming.