TY - JOUR
T1 - The neural basis of the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon
T2 - When a face seems familiar but is not remembered
AU - Yovel, Galit
AU - Paller, Ken A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by NINDS grant NS34639. We thank Stephan Boehm, Marcia Grabowecky, Satoru Suzuki, and Axel Mecklinger for their input; Walter Endl for kindly providing the facial stimuli; and Craig Hutson for wonderful technical support, voice recordings, and help with data collection.
PY - 2004/2
Y1 - 2004/2
N2 - A common distinction in contemporary research on episodic memory is between familiarity, an unsubstantiated impression that an event was experienced previously, and recollection, remembering some information plus the spatiotemporal context of the episode in which it was acquired. The epitome of pure familiarity - the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon - occurs when one believes that a person is familiar (often upon seeing their face in an atypical context) while failing to recall any information about that person whatsoever. Prior research on familiarity and recollection has relied on verbal material. Whereas word meanings and pronunciations are well learned in advance, here we produced pure familiarity and recollection using photographs of faces never seen before the experiment. When participants recognized a face, recollection was inferred if they also remembered either the occupation associated with that face earlier in the experiment or any other episodic detail. Pure familiarity was inferred when recognition occurred in the absence of any such contextual retrieval. Analyses of brain potentials recorded during initial encoding showed that right-sided neural activity predicted subsequent face familiarity, whereas bilateral potentials predicted subsequent face recollection. Results during memory testing were inconsistent with the popular idea that familiarity is generically indexed by reduced frontal N400-like potentials. Instead, both memory experiences were associated with bilateral, parietal-maximum brain potentials, although with smaller amplitudes and for a shorter duration for familiarity. These similarities between electrophysiological correlates of pure familiarity and recollection suggest that familiarity with faces may arise by virtue of a subset of the neural processing responsible for recollection.
AB - A common distinction in contemporary research on episodic memory is between familiarity, an unsubstantiated impression that an event was experienced previously, and recollection, remembering some information plus the spatiotemporal context of the episode in which it was acquired. The epitome of pure familiarity - the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon - occurs when one believes that a person is familiar (often upon seeing their face in an atypical context) while failing to recall any information about that person whatsoever. Prior research on familiarity and recollection has relied on verbal material. Whereas word meanings and pronunciations are well learned in advance, here we produced pure familiarity and recollection using photographs of faces never seen before the experiment. When participants recognized a face, recollection was inferred if they also remembered either the occupation associated with that face earlier in the experiment or any other episodic detail. Pure familiarity was inferred when recognition occurred in the absence of any such contextual retrieval. Analyses of brain potentials recorded during initial encoding showed that right-sided neural activity predicted subsequent face familiarity, whereas bilateral potentials predicted subsequent face recollection. Results during memory testing were inconsistent with the popular idea that familiarity is generically indexed by reduced frontal N400-like potentials. Instead, both memory experiences were associated with bilateral, parietal-maximum brain potentials, although with smaller amplitudes and for a shorter duration for familiarity. These similarities between electrophysiological correlates of pure familiarity and recollection suggest that familiarity with faces may arise by virtue of a subset of the neural processing responsible for recollection.
KW - ERPs
KW - Familiarity
KW - Memory for faces
KW - Recollection
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=1242338916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.09.034
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.09.034
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AN - SCOPUS:1242338916
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 21
SP - 789
EP - 800
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
IS - 2
ER -