Contributions of prefrontal cortex to recognition memory: Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence

To clarify the involvement of prefrontal cortex in episodic memory, behavio ral and event-related potential (ERP) measures of recognition were examined in patients with dorsolateral prefrontal lesions. In controls, recognition accuracy and the ERP old-new effect declined with increasing retention int ervals. Although frontal patients showed a higher false-alarm rate to new w ords, their hit rate to old words and ERP old-new effect were intact, sugge sting that recognition processes were not fundamentally altered by prefront al damage. The opposite behavioral pattern was observed in patients with hi ppocampal lesions: a normal false-alarm rate and a precipitous decline in h it rate at long lags. The intact ERP effect and the change in response bias during recognition suggest that frontal patients exhibited a deficit in st rategic processing or postretrieval monitoring, in contrast to the more pur ely mnemonic deficit shown by hippocampal patients.