INTRODUCTION A face can function as an effective memory cue, provoking the retrieval of a wealth of stored information about an individual. Yet, the brain events that allow us to remember the people we know are largely unknown. Neuropsychological studies of patients with brain damage suggest that perceiving and remembering faces depend on processing in specific cortical regions. Additional information about the relevant physiological mechanisms may be revealed by measuring brain activity during normal face processing. Here we show that measures of the electrical activity of the brain can be used toward this end. Person recognition---defined as remembering a known individual and retrieving an assemblage of personspecific information pertaining to that individual--- generally begins with the perceptual processing of a facial image. Voice information, contextual cues, expectations, inferences, and other factors often combine to allow a person to be recognized, but the facial imag

Introduction Neuropsychological studies of memory have shown that recollection, the subjective experience of remembering, often accompanies the recall and recognition of facts and events (also known as declarative memory), whereas other forms of memory are commonly observed in the absence of conscious remembering (Gabrieli, 1998; Mayes and Downes, 1997; Schacter et al., 1993; Squire and Schacter, 2002). People typically exhibit conscious memory when they recognize that a specific stimulus had been presented earlier, and perceptualpriming when processing of that stimulus is otherwise altered in certain ways due to its prior presentation, sometimes with no recollection of that prior episode. Patients with amnesia may be poor at recollecting faces, but like people without a memory disorder, they respond faster during an implicit memory test to recently viewed faces than to new faces (Paller et al., 1992). This pattern of performance is known as preserved priming in amnesia (Schacter and

iteria. Declarative Memory Observations of preserved and impaired memory in patients with amnesia indicate that the recall and recognition of facts and episodes, or declarative memory, is dependent on a particular subset of brain regions and can be disrupted selectively. How can we develop a better understanding of this selectivity? Indeed, one might pose the question: Why is declarative memory different from all other forms of memory? Here are four answers to this question: 1. Because declarative memory has distinct behavioral characteristics. 2. Because declarative memory has distinct subjective characteristics. 3. Because declarative memory has a distinct cognitive structure. 4. Because declarative memory has distinct neural substrates. Memory theorists tend to give one or another of these answers greater emphasis, as discussed further below. In any event, determi

Results from recent neuroimaging studies have led to a controversy as to whether right or left prefrontal regions are relatively more important for episodic retrieval. To address this issue, we recorded event-related brain potentials during two recognition tests with identical stimuli but differing retrieval demands. In both tests, participants viewed a sequence of object drawings, half of which were identical to ones viewed earlier except for a change in size and half of which were new. Instructions were to discriminate between old and Z. Z. new objects general test or to additionally decide whether old objects were larger or smaller at study specific test . Frontal brain potentials that were more positive during the specific than during the general test for both old and new objects were interpreted as neural correlates of the process by which specific attributes of test cues are compared with information retrieved from memory. Another ERP difference between the specific and general tests, which was observed for old objects only, had a left posterior scalp topography and was interpreted to reflect the reactivation of memories for studied objects. Frontal and posterior potentials thus reflected two memory processes important for accurate episodic retrieval. Furthermore, our findings suggest that both left and right prefrontal regions were engaged when demands to retrieve and evaluate perceptual information increased. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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