id_820. DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT OF INHIBITORY CONTROL IN SEMANTIC MEMORY RETRIEVAL
Veronika Zelenayová1, Adam Kubinec1, Martin Marko1,2
1 Centre of Experimental Medicine, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Department of Behavioural Neuroscience, Sienkiewiczova 1, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
2 Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Department of Applied Informatics, Mlynská dolina F1, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
INTRODUCTION: Inhibition is a core executive function enabling flexible behavior by suppressing inappropriate responses and thoughts. Converging evidence indicates that it may also regulate memory processes, yet the mechanisms underlying this role remain unclear.
AIM(S): In two experiments, we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms of inhibitory control by dissociating whether and how inhibition proactively prevents or reactively suppresses irrelevant conceptual activation in memory.
METHOD(S): The first experiment (N = 75) employed a novel paradigm manipulating the requirement for inhibitory control during semantic retrieval (free-associative vs. dissociative/inhibitory task) and its timing (baseline vs. pre-cued trials), while assessing retrieval latency and associative intrusions. This was followed by old/new recognition test assessing memory for stimuli presented during the main task. The second experiment (N = 31) combined this paradigm with pupillometry, enabling time-resolved analysis of pupil dilation across the retrieval tasks to characterize the temporal dynamics of inhibitory engagement.
RESULTS: Although pre-cuing improved retrieval performance, this benefit was attributable to facilitated task switching rather than inhibition. More importantly, efficient inhibitory engagement during retrieval predicted impaired recognition performance, suggesting that inhibition is recruited early to attenuate depth of stimulus processing (encoding) and thereby limit the activation of related but interfering memory representations. This interpretation was further supported by pupillometric analyses revealing two temporally dissociable, antagonistic components: an early component consistent with inhibitory engagement and a later component consistent with interference resolution.
CONCLUSIONS: Together, these findings provide evidence for an early-acting inhibitory mechanism that adaptively attenuates processing depth of incoming stimuli to reduce retrieval interference.
FINANCIAL SUPPORT: APVV-23-0145, VEGA 2/0052/23