A commonly held assumption is that consciousness is a defining feature that distinguishes explicit memory (with conscious awareness) from implicit memory (without conscious awareness). Although early studies support this notion, recent evidence suggests that conscious and non-conscious memory systems may share crucial underlying processes. Here, we propose that one locus of interaction between...
Abstract Having been banished from scientific investigation for nearly a century, the study of consciousness has made a triumphant return and secured a prominent place in research in cognitive neuroscience. There is no better example of this development than in research on human memory, where issues related to consciousness have been a central concern since the early 1980s. Much of the research...
Abstract: Why is consciousness associated with recovery of memories that are initially dependent on the hippocampal system? A hypothesis is proposed that the medial temporal lobe/hippocampal complex (MTL/H) receives as its input only information that is consciously apprehended. By a process termed “cohesion,” the MTL/H binds into a memory trace those neural elements that mediated the conscious...