Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27396675›Full record

ArticleNeuropsychologia2016

Tracking the intrusion of unwanted memories into awareness with event-related potentials.

Robin Hellerstedt, Mikael Johansson, Michael C Anderson

Open access · hybridAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Neuropsychologia, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
28citing papers in PubMed
2.7field-weighted citation impact, top 10% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

28 citing papers in PubMed, 64 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Emotion regulation modulates subsequent control of unwanted memories.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Review
  6. Memory control deficits in the sleep-deprived human brain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Aversive memories can be weakened during human sleep via the reactivation of positive interfering memories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. EEG evidence that morally relevant autobiographical memories can be suppressed.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2022
    Article
  17. Anterior Cingulate Cortex Signals the Need to Control Intrusive Thoughts during Motivated Forgetting.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022
    Article
  18. Article
  19. Prefrontal-hippocampal interactions supporting the extinction of emotional memories: the retrieval stopping model.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022
    Review
  20. Losing Control: Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2021
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Robin HellerstedtDepartment of Psychology, Lund University, Paradisgatan 5 P, 223 50 Lund, Sweden. Electronic address: robin.hellerstedt@psy.lu.se.
Mikael JohanssonDepartment of Psychology, Lund University, Paradisgatan 5 P, 223 50 Lund, Sweden.
Michael C AndersonMRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK.
Lund University · SEUniversity of Cambridge · GB

Funding

Medical Research Council MC-A060-5PR00Medical Research Council MC_U105597121
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Involuntary retrieval of unwanted memories is a common symptom in several clinical disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder. With an aim to track the temporal dynamics of such memory intrusions, we recorded electrophysiological measures of brain activity while participants engaged in a Think/No-Think task. We presented the left hand word (the cue) of previously encoded word pairs in green or red font. We asked participants to think of the associated right hand word (the associate) when the cue appeared in green (Think condition) and to avoid thinking of the associate when the cue appeared in red (No-Think condition). To isolate cases when participants experienced an intrusive memory, at the end of each trial, participants judged whether the response had come to mind; we classified memories that came to mind during No-Think trials, despite efforts to stop retrieval, as intrusions. In an event-related potential (ERP) analysis, we observed a negative going slow wave (NSW) effect that indexed the duration of a trace in mnemonic awareness; whereas voluntary retrieval and maintenance of the associate was related to a sustained NSW that lasted throughout the 3-s recording epoch, memory intrusions generated short-lived NSWs that were rapidly truncated. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that the intrusion-NSW reflects the associate briefly penetrating working memory. More broadly, these findings exploit the high temporal resolution of ERPs to track the online dynamics of memory intrusions.

Indexed as

Inhibition, PsychologicalMemory, EpisodicAdultAwarenessBrain MappingElectroencephalographyEvoked PotentialsFemaleHumansMaleMemoryNeuropsychological TestsThinkingVerbal LearningYoung AdultEpisodic memoryERPForgettingIntrusive memoryInvoluntary retrievalThink/No-Think

Identifiers

PMID27396675
PMCPMC5010041
OpenAlexW2474649092

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.