Conscious and unconscious episodic memory.
Our findings suggest that the human hippocampal formation specializes in the rapid establishment of new conceptual associations between items in memory. Associations are the building blocks of episodic memory. The hippocampal formation mediates the rapid encoding of new associations even when encoding (and later retrieval) are carried out without conscious awareness of encoding (and retrieval). Patients with hippocampal damage are impaired at encoding relational information both consciously and unconsciously. Hence, hippocampus is necessary for rapid relational encoding at all awareness levels. Given that flexible associations are the building blocks of episodic memory, we conjecture that humans possess episodic memories at all levels of consciousness.
Role of sleep stages and sleep parameters in memory consolidation and in memory encoding during sleep.
We study the consolidation of consciously and unconsciously wake-acquired memories in healthy individuals and brain damaged patients during daytime naps using polysomnographic recordings. A recent focus is on verbal memory encoding during sleep.
Superiority of unconscious versus conscious information processing.
When a lot of information needs to be encoded, weighed and integrated to arrive at valid decisions, unconscious processing may outplay conscious processing because of the limited workspace of consciousness. We are testing this hypothesis in a series of experiments using masked presentations of movies.
