Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.07.08.193763v1?rss=1 Authors: Benjamin J. Griffiths, María Carmen Martín-Buro, Bernhard P. Staresina, Simon Hanslmayr, Tobias Staudigl Abstract: Episodic memory retrieval is characterised by the vivid reinstatement of information about a personally-experienced event. Growing evidence suggests that the reinstatement of such information is supported by reductions in the spectral power of alpha/beta activity. Given that the amount of information that can be recalled depends on the amount of information that was originally encoded, information-based accounts of alpha/beta activity would suggest that retrieval-related alpha/beta power decreases similarly depend upon decreases in alpha/beta power during encoding. To test this hypothesis, seventeen human participants completed a sequence-learning task while undergoing concurrent MEG recordings. Regression-based analyses were then used to estimate how alpha/beta power decreases during encoding predicted alpha/beta power decreases during retrieval, on a trial-by-trial basis. When subjecting these parameter estimates to group-level analysis, we find evidence to suggest that retrieval-related alpha/beta (7-15Hz) power decreases fluctuate as a function of encoding-related alpha/beta power decreases. These results suggest that retrieval-related alpha/beta power decreases are contingent on the decrease in alpha/beta power that arose during encoding. Subsequent analysis uncovered no evidence to suggest that these alpha/beta power decreases reflect stimulus identity, indicating that the contingency between encoding- and retrieval-related alpha/beta power reflects the reinstatement of a neurophysiological operation, rather than neural representation, during episodic memory retrieval.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.View Full Text Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info