Associative memory requires one to encode and form memory representations not just for individual items, but for the association or link between those items. Past work has suggested that associative memory is facilitated when individual items are familiar rather than simultaneously learning the items and their associative link. The current study employed multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA) to investigate whether item familiarization prior to associative encoding affects the distinctiveness of neural patterns, and whether that distinctiveness is also present during associative retrieval. Our results suggest that prior exposure to item stimuli impacts the representations of their shared association compared to stimuli that are novel at the time of associative encoding throughout most of the associative memory network. While this distinction was also present at retrieval, the overall extent of the difference was diminished. Overall the results suggest that stimulus familiarity influences the representation of associative pairings during memory encoding and retrieval, and the pair-specific representation is maintained across memory phases irrespective of this distinction.

联想记忆需要一个编码和格式存储的表示不只是个别项目，但这些项目之间的关联或链接。过去的工作表明，当个别项目很熟悉，而不是同时学习项目及其关联链接联想记忆变得容易。目前的研究中采用的多体图案分析（MVPA）调查之前缔编码项熟悉是否影响神经模式的独特性，以及这是否独特也是关联检索过程中存在。我们的研究结果表明，事先接触到项目的刺激影响相比，是在关联编码的全国大部分联想记忆网络时新刺激他们的共同关联的表示。虽然这种区别也出席检索，差的整体程度降低。总体而言，结果表明刺激熟悉度会影响记忆编码和检索过程中关联配对的表示，并且无论这种区别如何，在整个记忆阶段都保持对特定的表示。