Pupil dilation tracks the dynamics of mnemonic interference resolution.

ABSTRACT: Mnemonic interference refers to the inability to retrieve a goal-relevant memory due to interference from goal-irrelevant memories. Understanding the causes of such interference and how it is overcome has been a central goal in the science of memory for more than a century. Here, we shed new light on this fundamental issue by tracking participants' pupil response when they encode and retrieve memories in the face of competing goal-irrelevant memories. We show that pupil dilation systematically increased in accordance with interference from competing memory traces when participants retrieved previously learned information. Moreover, our results dissociate two main components in the pupillary response signal: an early component, which peaked in a time window where the pupillary waveform on a

SUBMITTER: Johansson R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5859100 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature