items are identified as compared to items not repeated.

For example, in one

task, repeated and unrepeated words are flashed on a screen so briefly that
many of the words are unreadable, and the measure of priming is the
increased likelihood of identifying repeated words as compared with
unrepeated words. Studies with amnesic patients and healthy individuals
have found that successful priming is typically independent of the ability to
recognize which items were repeated (Stark & Squire, 2000). Further,
functional imaging studies in healthy individuals suggest that priming often
results in reduced activity in cortical areas involved in initially processing
the stimuli (Schacter, Wig, & Stevens, 2007), suggesting that less neural
activity is required to identify words recently processed. These findings
suggest that the neuronal basis of priming is an increase in the efficiency
and bias in the direction of cortical sensory processing associated with
perceptual identification.

Summary of Cerebral Cortex

The cerebral cortex provides a major route of information flow into and out
of all of the memory systems discussed in this chapter. However, the cortex
is more than just a way station. It is highly plastic, and distinct cortical
areas are reorganized or biased by specific training experiences to meet
demands for specific types of perceptual or motor representations.