Hindering Memory Suppression by Perturbing the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex

Can the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex help keep unwanted memories from entering awareness? Participants first learned word pairs, then practised recalling or suppressing the associated words. During suppression, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation targeted either the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or a motor control site. Participants found it harder to keep memories out of awareness during prefrontal stimulation. The difference between stimulation sites in subsequent forgetting was inconclusive, so the findings support a causal role in stopping retrieval in the moment.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 38(2), 340–352