Multivariate fMRI and Eye Tracking Reveal Differential Effects of Visual Interference on Recognition Memory Judgments for Objects and Scenes.

Recent work has demonstrated that the perirhinal cortex (PRC) supports conjunctive object representations that aid object recognition memory following visual object interference. It is unclear, however, how these representations interact with other brain regions implicated in mnemonic retrieval and how congruent and incongruent interference influences the processing of targets and foils during object recognition. To address this, multivariate partial least squares was applied to fMRI data acquired during an interference match-to-sample task, in which participants made object or scene recognition judgments after object or scene interference. This revealed a pattern of activity sensitive to object recognition following congruent (i.e., object) interference that included PRC, prefrontal, and parietal regions. Moreover, functional connectivity analysis revealed a common pattern of PRC connectivity across interference and recognition conditions. Examination of eye movements during the same task in a separate study revealed that participants gazed more at targets than foils during correct object recognition decisions, regardless of interference congruency. By contrast, participants viewed foils more than targets for incorrect object memory judgments, but only after congruent interference. Our findings suggest that congruent interference makes object foils appear familiar and that a network of regions, including PRC, is recruited to overcome the effects of interference.

The human hippocampus is sensitive to the durations of events and intervals within a sequence.

Temporal details are an important facet of our memories for events. Consistent with this, it has been demonstrated that the hippocampus, a key structure in learning and memory, is sensitive to the temporal aspects of event sequences, including temporal order, context, recency and distance. One unexplored issue is whether the hippocampus also responds to the temporal duration characteristics of an event sequence, for example, how long each event lasted for or how much time elapsed between events. To address this, we used a temporal match-mismatch detection paradigm across two functional neuroimaging studies to explore whether the human hippocampus is sensitive to the durations of events and intervals that comprise a sequence lasting on the order of seconds. On each trial participants were shown a series of four scenes during an encoding and a test phase, and had to determine whether the durations of the intervals or events were altered. We observed hippocampal sensitivity to temporal durations within event sequences. Activity was significantly greater when participants detected repeating, in comparison to novel, durations. Moreover, greater functional connectivity was observed between hippocampus and brain regions previously implicated in second and millisecond timing when durations were novel, suggesting that the hippocampus may receive duration information from these areas for use within a mnemonic context rather than generate an independent timing signal. Our novel findings suggest that the hippocampus may integrate temporal duration information when binding event sequences.

The perirhinal cortex and recognition memory interference.

There has recently been an increase in interest in the effects of visual interference on memory processing, with the aim of elucidating the role of the perirhinal cortex (PRC) in recognition memory. One view argues that the PRC processes highly complex conjunctions of object features, and recent evidence from rodents suggests that these representations may be vital for buffering against the effects of pre-retrieval interference on object recognition memory. To investigate whether PRC-dependent object representations play a similar role in humans, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan neurologically healthy participants while they performed a novel interference-match-to-sample task. This paradigm was specifically designed to concurrently assess the impact of object versus spatial interference, on recognition memory for objects or scenes, while keeping constant the amount of object and scene information presented across all trials. Activity at retrieval was examined, within an anatomically defined PRC region of interest, according to the demand for object or scene memory, following a period of object compared with spatial interference. Critically, we found greater PRC activity for object memory following object interference, compared with object memory following scene interference, and no difference between object and scene interference for scene recognition. These data demonstrate a role for the human PRC during object recognition memory, following a period of object, but not scene interference, and emphasize the importance of representational content to mnemonic processing.

A role for perirhinal cortex in memory for novel object-context associations.

It is debated whether functional divisions between structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), in particular the perirhinal cortex (PrC) and hippocampus (HC), are best conceptualized according to memory process (Diana et al., 2007; Ranganath, 2010; Wixted et al., 2010) or stimulus category (Graham et al., 2010). In the former account, PrC is critical for item familiarity but not recollection of associations between items and their contexts (which is instead dependent upon the HC; Ranganath et al., 2004). In the latter theory, complex object representations in PrC are capable of supporting memory for objects as well as for object-context associations, particularly when there is a demand to discriminate between highly visually similar objects (Cowell et al., 2010). To adjudicate between these accounts, human participants were scanned while making two different judgments about visually presented objects (is the object common or uncommon, or does the object have more edges or curves). In a subsequent, unscanned, retrieval phase, participants made item (old/new) followed by context (encoding task) judgments about previously seen and novel objects. Neural activity at encoding was separated according to the accuracy of the retrieval judgments. PrC activity predicted successful item-context judgments, a result that remained when item-memory strength was equated across objects for which the context was remembered or forgotten. These data imply that the function of PrC goes beyond processing item-based memory information, contributing additionally to memory for item-context associations when the stimuli are objects (Graham et al., 2010).