Cognitive Neuroscience最新文献

Theories of memory consolidation suggest the role of brain regions and connectivity between brain regions change as memories age. Human lesion studies indicate memories become hippocampus-independent over years, whereas animal studies suggest this process occurs across relatively short intervals, from days to weeks. Human neuroimaging studies suggest that changes in hippocampal and cortical activity and connectivity can be detected over these short intervals, but many of these studies examined only two time periods. We examined memory and fMRI activity for photos of indoor and outdoor scenes across four time periods to examine these neural changes more carefully. Participants (N = 21) studied scenes 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month before scanning. During scanning, participants viewed scenes, made old/new recognition memory judgments, and gave confidence ratings. Memory accuracy, confidence ratings, and response times changed with memory age. Brain activity in a widespread cortical network either increased or decreased with memory age, whereas hippocampal activity was not related to memory age. These findings were almost identical when effects of behavioral changes across time periods were minimized. Functional connectivity of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex with the posterior parietal cortex increased with memory age. By contrast, functional connectivity of the hippocampus with the parahippocampal cortex and fusiform gyrus decreased with memory age. In sum, we detected changes in cortical activity and changes in hippocampal and cortical connectivity with memory age across short intervals. These findings provide support for the predictions of systems consolidation and suggest that these changes begin soon after memories are formed.

The role of the hippocampus during memory consolidation is not fully understood, with human and animal experiments producing conflicting conclusions. In particular, human lesion studies tend to indicate that the hippocampus gradually becomes independent from memory over years, whilst animal studies suggest that this can happen over days. Tallman et al. (this issue) used fMRI to investigate activity and functional connectivity in the brain at four different time points following memory encoding. Their findings include a decrease in functional connectivity between the hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex with memory age, which supports the system consolidation theory, but also argues against the reduced involvement of the hippocampus over time. This study sheds new light on the neurobiology of memory.

This special issue of Cognitive Neuroscience focuses on the roles of the hippocampus during long-term memory. A discussion paper by Tallman, Clark, and Smith (this issue) found that functional connectivity of the hippocampus with the parahippocampal cortex and fusiform gyrus decreased with memory age, providing support for systems consolidation. Commentaries were received by Berdugo-Vega and Gräff (this issue), Feld and Gerchen (this issue), Gellersen and Simons (this issue), Gobbo, Mitchell-Heggs, and Tse (this issue), Gilmore, Audrain, and Martin (this issue), Kirwan (this issue), Manns (this issue), Runyan and Brooks (this issue), Santangelo (this issue), and Yang (this issue). The author response considered the content and context of memorial information along with neuroanatomy and functional specialization and conducted new analyses to clarify their findings. An empirical fMRI paper by Thakral, Yu, and Rugg (this issue) reported that the hippocampus was sensitive to the amount of contextual information retrieved, regardless of remember-know status. Another empirical study by Bjornn, Van, and Kirwan (this issue) found that hippocampal activation changes were correlated with the number of fixations at study for correct but not incorrect mnemonic discrimination judgments. A second discussion paper (Slotnick, this issue) concluded that no fMRI studies have provided evidence that the hippocampus is associated with working memory. Commentaries were received by Courtney (this issue), Kessels and Bergmann (this issue), Peters and Reithler (this issue), Rose and Chao (this issue), Stern and Hasselmo (this issue), and Wood, Clark, and Nee (this issue). The articles in this special issue illustrate that the roles of the hippocampus in long-term memory (and other types of memory) are under active investigation and provide many directions for research in the immediate future.

Working memory (WM) is the ability to maintain and manipulate internal representations. WM recruits varying brain regions based on task demands. Although the hippocampus has historically been associated with long-term memory (LTM), several studies provide evidence for its involvement during WM tasks. Slotnick (this issue) posits that this involvement is due to LTM processes. This argument rests on the assumption that processes are not shared among WM and LTM, and that WM processes are necessarily sustained. We argue that there are processes utilized by both WM and LTM, and that such processes need not be sustained to support WM.

In this commentary, we highlight the role of the hippocampus as a binding device that may explain its recruitment during associative working-memory paradigms. Furthermore, we argue that both functional neuroimaging research, as presented in Slotnick (this issue), and carefully designed lesion studies in patients with selective bilateral hippocampal damage are crucial for advancing our understanding of the neural structures and processing involved in human memory in general and disentangling the role of the hippocampus proper and other medial temporal lobe structures in working-memory function and long-term encoding specifically.