Brain Waves Reflect Your Memories

Abstract

In this paper, the brain activities for short-term and long-term memory were verified by event-related potentials of the brain. In addition, long-term memory had a proactive interference to short-term memory that could be found by observing the changes of potentials in the brain. In clinical trials, subjects randomly selected a poker card (target) to be memorized. Subsequently, they were tested by the recognition task that was comprised of a target card and two different cards. The changes of ERPs during card presentation reflected the retrieval process of memory in the brain. Experimental results revealed that the amplitude of P300 of ERPs was related to the short-term memory and could be used to identify whether the presented card was in one's memory or not. The card that was memorized in the short-term memory elicited a larger P300 than other cards without memorization. However, experimental results also found that some meaningful cards, for example spade-2, existed in one's long-term memory and elicited larger P300 amplitude than memorized cards in short-term memory, achieving significant levels. Thus, long-term memory affected the recognition task of short-term memory. The electrophysiological changes are an indicator to memory process and reflect the degree of meaning of objects in the memory. The research provided valuable results that support theories about memory in psychology.