Did I turn off the gas? Reality monitoring of everyday actions.

Failing to remember whether we performed, or merely imagined performing, an everyday action can occasionally be inconvenient, but in some circumstances it can have potentially dangerous consequences. In this fMRI study, we investigated the brain activity patterns, and objective and subjective behavioral measures, associated with recollecting such everyday actions. We used an ecologically valid "reality-monitoring" paradigm in which participants performed, or imagined performing, specified actions with real objects drawn from one of two boxes.

Intentional retrieval suppression can conceal guilty knowledge in ERP memory detection tests.

Brain-activity markers of guilty knowledge have been promoted as accurate and reliable measures for establishing criminal culpability. Tests based on these markers interpret the presence or absence of memory-related neural activity as diagnostic of whether or not incriminating information is stored in a suspect's brain. This conclusion critically relies on the untested assumption that reminders of a crime uncontrollably elicit memory-related brain activity.

A specific brain structural basis for individual differences in reality monitoring.

Much recent interest has centered on understanding the relationship between brain structure variability and individual differences in cognition, but there has been little progress in identifying specific neuroanatomical bases of such individual differences. One cognitive ability that exhibits considerable variability in the healthy population is reality monitoring; the cognitive processes used to introspectively judge whether a memory came from an internal or external source (e.g.

Time-travelling and mind-travelling: examining individual differences in self-projection.

It has recently been suggested that memory and theory of mind may share the characteristic of mentally projecting oneself into another time or place to imagine alternative perspectives. This study examines this possible relationship by investigating individual differences in performance on a reality monitoring task and two mentalising tasks: the faux pas task and the reading the mind in the eyes test. Consistent with recent functional neuroimaging studies that have observed activity during reality monitoring tasks in the same region of prefrontal cortex that was activated in previous mentalising studies, a significant positive correlation in performance was observed between memory for agency and faux-pas recognition.