O esquecimento intencional pode cumprir uma função estratégica no sistema cognitivo, que permite aos indivíduos não pensar sobre acontecimentos indesejados do passado, tais como eventos traumáticos, dolorosos e violentos, dos quais se prefere não recordar. Enquanto esquecer involuntariamente é uma falha da lembrança, por outro lado, esquecer intencionalmente parece ser uma função estratégica da memória. A presente dissertação teve por objetivo investigar os mecanismos neurocognitivos que contribuem para o esquecimento de memórias. A dissertação se organizou em dois estudos. O primeiro estudo consiste em uma revisão sistemática de artigos empíricos publicados nos últimos dez anos sobre a supressão de memórias indesejadas. O segundo estudo é um ensaio empírico, no qual foi executado um experimento adaptado do paradigma Think/No-Think com a utilização de marcadores eletrofisiológicos de eletroencefalograma. Participaram do experimento 22 sujeitos, alocados aleatoriamente em dois grupos com estratégias distintas de esquecimento: Supressão de memória e substituição de pensamentos. Durante toda a tarefa experimental, os participantes tiveram dados de EEG continuamente gravados. Os resultados decorrentes do ensaio empírico estão de acordo com os achados da literatura, indicando que a positividade parietal em torno de 400-800ms após a apresentação do estímulo é um marcador de lembrança consciente durante a recuperação de memória. Apenas na estratégia de supressão de memória houve uma redução da positividade centro-parietal durante o esquecimento, entre 450 e 700ms após apresentação do estímulo. Além disso, uma maior deflexão no componente N2 durante a supressão é um preditor de esquecimento induzido. Os achados indicam que é possível mapear o sistema neurocognitivo subjacente à supressão de memórias. / Intentional forgetting can be characterized as a strategic function of the cognitive system that allows us not to think about unwanted memories from our past, as for example emotional events or traumatic experiences that we would prefer not to remember. While forgetting involuntarily is a failure of recollection, on the other hand, forgetting intentionally seems to be a strategic function of memory. The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms that contribute to forgetting memories. The dissertation was organized in two studies. The first study consists of a systematic review of empirical articles published in the last ten years on the suppression of unwanted memories. The second study is an empirical essay, in which an experiment adapted from the Think/No-Think paradigm was performed, with the use of electrophysiological markers of electroencephalogram. Twenty-two subjects participated in the experiment, randomly assigned to two groups with distinct strategies of forgetting: Memory suppression and thought substitution. Throughout the experimental task, participants had continuously recorded EEG data. The results of the empirical essay are in agreement with the literature findings, indicating that the parietal positivity around 400-800 ms after the presentation of the stimulus is a marker of conscious memory during memory recovery. Only direct memory suppression reduced centro-parietal positivity during forgetting, between 450 and 700 ms post-stimulus. Also, a greater deflection in the N2 component during suppression is an induced forgetting predictor. The findings indicate that it is possible to map the neurocognitive system underlying memory suppression.

Cocaine users display impaired inhibitory control. The influence of cocaine-related stimuli on inhibitory control has not been assessed. The Attentional Bias-Behavioral Activation (ABBA) task uses cocaine and neutral images as cues to determine if drug-related images impair inhibitory control in cocaine users. This dissertation was designed to assess the influence of cocaine images on inhibitory control in cocaine users through the conduct of studies designed to address four aims. The first aim was to demonstrate that cocaine users display impaired inhibitory control following cocaine images compared to neutral images on the ABBA task. This was accomplished through the conduct of two experiments. The first experiment piloted the ABBA task and cocaine users completed the cocaine go (n = 15) or neutral go condition (n = 15) of the task. The second experiment consisted of two studies designed to develop a within-subjects methodology for using the ABBA task. In the first study, cocaine users completed either the cocaine go (n = 20) or neutral go (n = 20) condition of the ABBA task and all participants also completed the Cued Go/No-Go task, with geometric shapes as cues. In the second study, cocaine users (n = 18) completed the cocaine go condition of the ABBA task and a modified version of the ABBA task with all neutral images as cues to further refine a possible within-subjects methodology. The second aim was to demonstrate that inhibitory failures occur most often when cues are presented for short compared to longer durations of time. Data collected during other protocols (n = 91) were combined to investigate the influence of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; i.e., the amount of time a cue is presented before a target indicated a response should be executed or withheld) on inhibitory control following cocaine-related and neutral cues on the ABBA task. The third aim was to demonstrate impaired inhibitory control following cocaine images on the ABBA task is specific to cocaine users. Cocaine users (data collected in the second experiment of the first aim) and non-using control participants (n = 16) completed the cocaine go and all neutral conditions of the ABBA task and the Cued Go/No-Go task. The fourth aim was to demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of inhibitory control training to cocaine-related stimuli with cocaine users. A small pilot clinical trial was conducted and cocaine users were randomly assigned to complete inhibitory control training to cocaine images or geometric shapes. Cocaine images impaired inhibitory control on the ABBA task, as demonstrated by an increased proportion of inhibitory failures in the cocaine go condition compared to the neutral go condition in Experiments 1, 2, and 4. The proportion of inhibitory failures following cocaine images in Experiment 4 was increased at short (i.e., 100, 200) compared to long SOAs. Cocaine images also impaired inhibitory control compared to the Cued Go/No-Go Task in Experiment 2, however there were no differences in the proportion of inhibitory failures between the cocaine go and all neutral conditions of the ABBA task. There were no differences between cocaine users and controls in Experiment 3 for the proportion of inhibitory failures on the ABBA or Cued Go/No-Go tasks, but controls responded faster indicating a speed/accuracy trade off occurred in the control group. Inhibitory control training as an approach to improve treatment outcomes is feasible, as indicated by attendance and accuracy on the training task, and participants rated the overall procedure as satisfactory in Experiment 5. A better understanding of inhibitory control in the presence of cocaine related cues could be crucial to better understand how drug cues contribute to the risk for relapse and the continued use of drugs because both occur in the presence of drug cues.

O esquecimento intencional pode cumprir uma função estratégica no sistema cognitivo, que permite aos indivíduos não pensar sobre acontecimentos indesejados do passado, tais como eventos traumáticos, dolorosos e violentos, dos quais se prefere não recordar. Enquanto esquecer involuntariamente é uma falha da lembrança, por outro lado, esquecer intencionalmente parece ser uma função estratégica da memória. A presente dissertação teve por objetivo investigar os mecanismos neurocognitivos que contribuem para o esquecimento de memórias. A dissertação se organizou em dois estudos. O primeiro estudo consiste em uma revisão sistemática de artigos empíricos publicados nos últimos dez anos sobre a supressão de memórias indesejadas. O segundo estudo é um ensaio empírico, no qual foi executado um experimento adaptado do paradigma Think/No-Think com a utilização de marcadores eletrofisiológicos de eletroencefalograma. Participaram do experimento 22 sujeitos, alocados aleatoriamente em dois grupos com estratégias distintas de esquecimento: Supressão de memória e substituição de pensamentos. Durante toda a tarefa experimental, os participantes tiveram dados de EEG continuamente gravados. Os resultados decorrentes do ensaio empírico estão de acordo com os achados da literatura, indicando que a positividade parietal em torno de 400-800ms após a apresentação do estímulo é um marcador de lembrança consciente durante a recuperação de memória. Apenas na estratégia de supressão de memória houve uma redução da positividade centro-parietal durante o esquecimento, entre 450 e 700ms após apresentação do estímulo. Além disso, uma maior deflexão no componente N2 durante a supressão é um preditor de esquecimento induzido. Os achados indicam que é possível mapear o sistema neurocognitivo subjacente à supressão de memórias. / Intentional forgetting can be characterized as a strategic function of the cognitive system that allows us not to think about unwanted memories from our past, as for example emotional events or traumatic experiences that we would prefer not to remember. While forgetting involuntarily is a failure of recollection, on the other hand, forgetting intentionally seems to be a strategic function of memory. The aim of this dissertation was to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms that contribute to forgetting memories. The dissertation was organized in two studies. The first study consists of a systematic review of empirical articles published in the last ten years on the suppression of unwanted memories. The second study is an empirical essay, in which an experiment adapted from the Think/No-Think paradigm was performed, with the use of electrophysiological markers of electroencephalogram. Twenty-two subjects participated in the experiment, randomly assigned to two groups with distinct strategies of forgetting: Memory suppression and thought substitution. Throughout the experimental task, participants had continuously recorded EEG data. The results of the empirical essay are in agreement with the literature findings, indicating that the parietal positivity around 400-800 ms after the presentation of the stimulus is a marker of conscious memory during memory recovery. Only direct memory suppression reduced centro-parietal positivity during forgetting, between 450 and 700 ms post-stimulus. Also, a greater deflection in the N2 component during suppression is an induced forgetting predictor. The findings indicate that it is possible to map the neurocognitive system underlying memory suppression.

The smartphone has quickly become the most used device to access the internet. Academic and public concern has been raised if overuse of smartphone technology can have detrimental effects on brain and behavior. Preliminary results suggest that excessive smartphone usage may be linked to impaired inhibitory control. The present study investigates whether such a relationship is present in a sample of healthy individuals with varying degrees of usage. To investigate the proposed relationship, the Stroop color and word task and the stop-signal task was utilized to measure inhibitory control, while screen time was utilized to measure duration of smartphone usage. A Pearson‘s correlation analysis and an independent t-test/Mann Whitney-U test analyzed the results, which did not yield statistical significance.

Background: Generally, older adults perform worse than younger adults in complex working memory span tasks. So far, it is unclear which processes mainly contribute to age-related differences in working memory span. Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate age effects and the roles of proactive and coactive interference in a recognition-based version of the operation span task. Methods: Younger and older adults performed standard versions and distracter versions of the operation span task. At retrieval, participants had to recognize target words in word lists containing targets as well as proactive and/or coactive interference-related lures. Results: Results show that, overall, younger adults outperformed older adults in the recognition of target words. Furthermore, analyses of error types indicate that, while younger adults were only affected by simultaneously presented distracter words, older adults had difficulties with both proactive and coactive interference. Conclusion: Results suggest that age effects in complex span tasks may not be mainly due to retrieval deficits in old age. / Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.

Objective: Binge-eating disorder (BED) in adults is associated with alterations in executive functions (EF) and obesity. Much less is known about these relationships in adolescents, including whether poor EF are associated with eating disorder psychopathology and/or elevated body mass index. The present study examined EF in response to neutral stimuli in youth with BED. Method: Adolescents with BED and obesity (n=22), individually matched adolescents with obesity (n=22), and normal weight (n=22) completed neuropsychological tests targeting inhibition (Color-Word Interference Test), sustained attention (D2 Concentration Endurance Test), cognitive flexibility (Comprehensive Trail Making Test), and decision-making (Iowa Gambling Task). Results: Adolescents with BED and obesity displayed significantly poorer inhibitory control compared to normal-weight adolescents. This effect persisted after controlling for the level of secondary education. However, initial differences between adolescents with obesity and normal-weight controls regarding inhibitory control and sustained attention vanished after controlling for education. The three groups did not differ regarding cognitive flexibility and decision-making. Moreover, adolescents with BED and obesity did not perform worse than adolescents with obesity on any of the neuropsychological tests. Discussion: Overall, our results indicate adolescent BED is associated with only a few alterations in general EF, specifically inhibitory control, and underline BED and educational level as confounding factors in neuropsychological research on obesity. To further delineate EF profiles of adolescents with BED, future research should focus on EF in response to disorder-related stimuli and experimental settings with high ecological validity.

Overweight and obesity are prevalent public health problems that impact physical, mental, and social health. Many studies have evaluated weight loss treatments, but most individuals are unsuccessful at maintaining weight loss long-term. Behavioral and cognitive interventions may be effective in promoting weight loss and weight loss maintenance. One cognitive intervention that has shown potential success in reducing weight and caloric intake is inhibitory control training (ICT). ICT involves trainings where individuals are asked to repeatedly withhold dominant responses to unhealthy or high-calorie food images in an effort to increase food-related inhibitory control abilities. Reductions in caloric intake or weight may occur after as little as one week of ICT; however, it is unclear how more frequent ICT sessions promote weight loss and reduce caloric intake. Further, studies on food-specific ICT are generally poorly powered and it is unclear how ICT affects underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. One way to measure inhibitory control processes is through the N2 component of the scalp-recorded event-related potential (ERP). The amplitude of the N2 ERP component tends to be larger (i.e., more negative) when an individual inhibits a dominant response during go/no-go tasks compared to non-inhibition go trials. I conducted a quasi-randomized controlled trial where 100 individuals with overweight or obesity were assigned to either a generic (active control; n = 48) or food-specific ICT (experimental group; n = 52). ICTs were completed four times per week for four weeks. Weight and caloric intake were obtained at baseline, immediately after four-weeks of ICT, and at a 12-week follow-up. Participants also completed a high-calorie and a neutral go/no-go task while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded at each visit. Results from mixed model analyses suggest that neither weight, caloric intake, nor N2 ERP component amplitude towards high-calorie foods changed at post-testing or at the 12-week follow up for either group. Regression analyses suggest that individuals with lower baseline levels of inhibition may show greater weight loss and reductions in caloric intake after a generic ICT, while individuals with higher baseline levels of inhibition may show greater weight loss and reductions in caloric intake after a food-specific ICT. Self-report ratings indicated the appetitive drive towards food decreased over the course of the study, particularly for individuals with higher levels of baseline inhibition. Overall, generic- or food-specific ICT did not affect weight, caloric intake, or food-specific N2 ERP amplitude. Food-specific ICT may be more effective in reducing caloric intake and weight for individuals with larger inhibition responses to food stimuli, while generic ICT may be more effective in reducing caloric intake and weight for individuals with smaller inhibition responses to food stimuli. ICT may also be targeting other mediating processes, such as the appetitive value of food, as opposed to improving food-specific inhibitory control.

La créativité repose sur la capacité à générer des idées à la fois originales et adaptées aux contraintes de la tâche afin de résoudre des problèmes pour lesquels aucune solution optimale n'est connue. Toutefois, dans ce type de circonstances, les connaissances intuitives des individus ainsi que leurs stratégies habituelles de résolution de problème les conduisent à générer des solutions peu créatives aboutissant à un phénomène de fixation, alors même que d'autres classes de solutions plus originales mais moins aisément accessibles pourraient être explorées. D'après le modèle triadique de la créativité, ces effets de fixations résulteraient de l'activation rapide et spontanée d'un système 1 intuitif et heuristique, alors qu'il serait plus avantageux d'explorer d'autres solutions en utilisant les processus cognitifs d'un système 2 délibératif et analytique. Ce modèle suggère également que le processus d'inhibition cognitive appartenant à un troisième système serait la clef pour diminuer la prégnance de ces effets de fixation créée par le système 1, et augmenter l'exploration d'autres voies plus créatives appartenant au système 2. Ainsi, l'objectif général de cette thèse consistait à apporter des arguments expérimentaux en faveur de ce modèle dans une approche interdisciplinaire allant de la psychologie expérimentale du développement aux neurosciences cognitives. À travers une série de cinq études expérimentales réalisées chez les enfants, les adolescents et les adultes, nous avons démontré 1) que les effets de fixation se développent avec l'âge et sont modulables par l'introduction d'indices comme des exemples de solutions, 2) qu'il est possible de stimuler la créativité des adolescents et des adultes en changeant la représentation qu'ils ont du problème de créativité par l'intermédiaire d'un paradigme d'amorçage, 3) qu'être capable de proposer des solutions créatives en dehors de la fixation implique le processus d'inhibition cognitive et la capacité à détecter que les solutions initialement générées ne sont pas originales, 4) que cette capacité de détection de conflit se développement au cours de l'adolescence et 5) que résister aux effets de fixation implique une modulation de l'activité des réseaux cérébraux au niveau des cortex frontaux et pariétaux sous tendant le contrôle cognitif et les associations sémantiques. / Creativity defined as the ability to think of something original, and adaptive concerning task constraints is crucial during circumstances in which individuals must generate new solutions to solve an unknown problem. In such circumstances, people propose solutions that are built on the most common and accessible knowledge within a specific domain leading to a fixation effects whereas other classes of more creative solutions could be explore. According to our triple systems model of creativity, the difficulty to generate creative ideas results from a specific failure to inhibit intuitive responses leading to fixation effect generated automatically by the intuitive and heuristic System 1 and activate the deliberative and analytic system 2 to explore more creative solutions. This model posits that inhibitory control is a core process to overcoming fixation effects and generating original solutions in a creative task. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to provide empirical evidences in support of the triple system model of creativity by using an interdisciplinary approach from the field of experimental developmental psychology to the field of cognitive neuroscience. In a series of five experimental studies in children, adolescents and adults, we have demonstrated that 1) fixation effects develop with age and changes with the introduction of external cues such as examples of solutions 2) changing the individuals' representation of the creative task using a priming procedure can stimulate creative ideas generation in adolescents and adults, 3) overcoming fixation to explore creative solutions involves inhibitory control and the ability to detect that initial responses that come quickly to mind are not original, 4) this conflict detection ability develops with age during adolescence and 5) overcoming fixation is related to modulations of brain networks activations within the frontal and the parietal cortex involve in cognitive control and semantic associations respectively.

No description available.

Agtarap, Wright, Mlynski, Hammad, and Blackledge took an initial step in providing support for the predictive validity of a new conceptual analysis concerned with behavioral restraint, defined as active resistance against a behavioral impulse or urge. The current study was designed to partially replicate and extend findings from their study, employing a common film protocol and a procedure for inducing low- and high levels of fatigue. Analyses on key data indicated that the fatigue manipulation was ineffective. On the other hand, they supported the suggestion that behavioral restraint should be proportional to the strength of an urge being resisted so long as success is perceived as possible and worthwhile. Analyses also provided evidence of gender differences for this behavioral restraint task. Women showed relatively enhanced CV responses to my manipulation of urge magnitude, performed less well, rated the behavioral restraint challenge as harder, and rated success on the more difficult behavioral restraint task as more important. A broad indication is that men and women can differ in the strength of impulses they experience in response to stimulus presentations as well as in the importance they place on resisting the impulses.