Trying versus succeeding: Event-related designs dissociate memory processes

Abstract

First paragraph: We have all experienced the frustration of trying to remember a name or fact that feels as if it is at the tip of our tongue but remains inaccessible despite our best efforts to retrieve it. This common occurrence provides a heuristic demonstration that acts of remembering can be separated into two types of processes—one associated with the effort of retrieving and one associated with success in retrieving. In the instance of the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon, effort is exerted but information is not successfully retrieved. While this exact experience is not the focus of the study by Ranganath and Paller in this issue of Neuron (1999), the phenomenon illustrates the issue that is explored; namely, understanding how and where the processes associated with retrieval effort and retrieval success occur in the brain. Ranganath and Paller have shed new light on the question of what brain regions are involved in effort and success during episodic memory (e.g., see Tulving 1983) by mapping event-related potentials (ERPs).