Memory Templates in Event-Related Oscillations, P300, MMN

Abstract

Many studies have reported human brain potentials elicited by unexpected, as well as expected but absent, sensory stimuli. Such “emitted,” or “endogenous,” potentials are generally regarded as signs of endogenous brain processes such as memory, internal time estimation, and other cognitive mechanisms (Ruchkin and Sutton 1983).

By “memory” I will mean any set of events that makes available to an organism something of a situation after that situation no longer obtains. “Novel” I will define as any aspects of a situation which differ sufficiently from prior situations to produce recordable physiological changes in the organism. By the term “thought” I will refer to the active uncertainty produced when an ordered set of memories mis-matches the current novelties of the situation. And “choice” I will use to designate processes of resolution of uncertainty that lead to action. Pribram(1963, p. 54)