Theta and Gamma Oscillations Predict Encoding and Retrieval of Declarative Memory

By D. Osipova, A. Takashima, Robert Oostenveld, Guillén Fernández, Eric Maris, Ole Jensen. Journal of Neuroscience, 2006

711 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although studies in animals and patients have demonstrated that brain oscillations play a role in declarative memory encoding and retrieval, little has been done to investigate the temporal dynamics and sources of brain activity in healthy human subjects performing such tasks. In a magnetoencephalography study using pictorial stimuli, we have now identified oscillatory activity in the gamma (60–90 Hz) and theta (4.5–8.5 Hz) band during declarative memory operations in healthy participants. Both theta and gamma activity was stronger for the later remembered compared with the later forgotten items (the “subsequent memory effect”). In the retrieval session, theta and gamma activity was stronger for recognized items compared with correctly rejected new items (the “old/new effect”). The gamma activity was also stronger for recognized compared with forgotten old items (the “recognition effect”). The effects in the theta band were observed over right parietotemporal areas, whereas the sources of the effects in the gamma band were identified in Brodmann area 18/19. We propose that the theta activity is directly engaged in mnemonic operations. The increase in neuronal synchronization in the gamma band in occipital areas may result in a stronger drive to subsequent areas, thus facilitating both memory encoding and retrieval. Alternatively, the gamma synchronization might reflect representations being reinforced by top-down activity from higher-level memory areas. Our results provide additional insight on human declarative memory operations and oscillatory brain activity that complements previous electrophysiological and brain imaging studies.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c5523f995866315d131fd380f2079616a4bc4b91

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Citations in the corpus

The Theta-Gamma Neural Code (2013, neutral): “Similar correlations have been found in humans, both in the hippocampus (Sederberg et al., 2007) and cortical regions (Osipova et al., 2006; Sederberg et al., 2007) Theta—”
Episodic Memory and Beyond: The Hippocampus and Neocortex in Transformation (2016, neutral): “In human studies, successful encoding has been associated with both gamma (Osipova et al. 2006) and theta (Long et al. 2014) frequencies in the HPC and posterior cortices.”
Frontal Midline Theta Oscillations during Working Memory Maintenance and Episodic Encoding and Retrieval (2013, background): “In addition to encoding, some studies have also reported links between theta power and retrieval of episodic memories (Addante et al., 2011; Burgess and Gruzelier, 1997; Gruber et al., 2008; Guderian and Düzel, 2005; Klimesch et al., 2000, 2006; Osipova et al., 2006).”
A taxonomy of external and internal attention. (2011, neutral): “Pretrial activations and patterns of neural oscillations also predict memory for both direct and indirect measures of memory (Osipova et al. 2006, Otten et al. 2002, Polyn et al. 2005, Turk-Browne et al. 2006).”
Gamma-band synchronization in the neocortex: novel analysis methods and their application to sensory and motivational systems (2013, background): “Indeed, studies in humans have shown that gamma synchronization in neocortex and hippocampus during encoding predicts formation of long-term memories (Osipova et al., 2006; Jensen et al., 2007; Fell & Axmacher, 2011).”
Causal influence of gamma oscillations on the sensorimotor rhythm (2011, background): “This hypothesis has gained further support by recent evidence that γ oscillations are indeed linked to performance in behavioral paradigms, providing information on successful encoding of new verbal- (Sederberg et al., 2007) and declarative memories (Osipova et al., 2006).”
Correcting for the sampling bias problem in spike train information measures. (2007, background): “Not surprisingly, an increasing number of studies report their specificity and usefulness in the search for neural correlates of behavior (Kreiman et al. 2006; Lee et al. 2005; Liu and Newsome 2006; Osipova et al. 2006; Rubino et al. 2006; Scherberger et al. 2005).”
Beyond ERPs: Oscillatory neuronal dynamics (2012, neutral): “Both EEG, intracranial EEG and MEG studies have demonstrated that induced gamma activity reflects successful long-term memory operations (T. Gruber, Tsivilis, Montaldi, & Muller, 2004; Osipova et al., 2006; Sederberg et al., 2006).”
Functional roles of rhythmic neuronal activity in the human visual and somatosensory system (2008, background): “reported very broadband high-frequency signals to be correlated with sustained working memory representations (Osipova et al., 2006).”
Decoding the tradeoff between encoding and retrieval to predict memory for overlapping events (2018, neutral): “In particular, subsequent memory is consistently predicted by increases in high frequency activity and decreases in low frequency activity (Osipova et al., 2006; Sederberg et al., 2006; Burke et al., 2014; Long et al., 2014; Greenberg et al., 2015).”
EEG and MEG: relevance to neuroscience. (2013, neutral): “An interesting demonstration of this phasecoupling is provided, for example, by the investigation of Osipova et al. (2006), who found an association between encoding/ retrieval of memorized items and the power of oscillatory activity in two frequency bands: g (60 to 90 Hz) and q (4.5 to 8.5 Hz)…”
Rhythms of human attention and memory: An embedded process perspective (2022, background): “Besides their role in perceptual processing, gamma oscillations were pronounced in posterior (Sederberg et al., 2003; Osipova et al., 2006; Friese et al., 2013) and MTL regions (Fell et al., 2001; Sederberg et al., 2007) during memory formation and during the maintenance of information in WM…”