Increased Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Activation during Accurate Eyewitness Memory Retrieval: An Exploratory Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Psychological Forensics Division, National Forensic Service, Wonju, Korea, Institute of Forensic Medicine and Department of Forensic Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

E-mail: yoosh@snu.ac.kr

We investigated the neural correlates of accurate eyewitness memory retrieval using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. We analyzed oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) concentration in the prefrontal cortex during eyewitness memory retrieval task and examined regional HbO2 differences between observed objects (target) and unobserved objects (lure). We found that target objects elicited increased activation in the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known for monitoring retrieval processing via bottom-up attentional processing. Our results suggest bottom-up attentional mechanisms could be different during accurate eyewitness memory retrieval. These findings indicate that investigating retrieval mechanisms using functional nearinfrared spectroscopy might be useful for establishing an accurate eyewitness recognition model.

Key Words: Memory; Recognition; Spectroscopy, near-infrared; Prefrontal cortex; Cognitive neuroscience