ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2024
Observing the suppression of individual aversive memories from conscious awareness.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- The effect of mask use on cross-race face perception: a simultaneous EEG and eye-tracking study.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Emotion regulation modulates subsequent control of unwanted memories.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Targeting memory of embedded positive verbal content indirectly modulates negative visual memory.iScience · 2025Article
- How does the brain remember? Distinct pathways for voluntary and involuntary recall.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
When reminded of an unpleasant experience, people often try to exclude the unwanted memory from awareness, a process known as retrieval suppression. Here we used multivariate decoding (MVPA) and representational similarity analyses on EEG data to track how suppression unfolds in time and to reveal its impact on item-specific cortical patterns. We presented reminders to aversive scenes and asked people to either suppress or to retrieve the scene. During suppression, mid-frontal theta power within the first 500 ms distinguished suppression from passive viewing of the reminder, indicating that suppression rapidly recruited control. During retrieval, we could discern EEG cortical patterns relating to individual memories-initially, based on theta-driven visual perception of the reminders (0 to 500 ms) and later, based on alpha-driven reinstatement of the aversive scene (500 to 3000 ms). Critically, suppressing retrieval weakened (during 360 to 600 ms) and eventually abolished item-specific cortical patterns, a robust effect that persisted until the reminder disappeared (780 to 3000 ms). Representational similarity analyses provided converging evidence that retrieval suppression weakened the representation of target scenes during the 500 to 3000 ms reinstatement window. Together, rapid top-down control during retrieval suppression abolished cortical patterns of individual memories, and precipitated later forgetting. These findings reveal a precise chronometry on the voluntary suppression of individual memories.
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