Work

Distinct neural mechanisms for remembering when an event occurred

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Events are often remembered as having occurred in a specific order, but almost nothing is known about how the brain encodes this temporal information. It is commonly assumed that temporal information is encoded via a single mechanism, based either on the temporal context in which the event occurred or inferred from the strength of the memory trace itself. By analyzing time-dependent changes in activity patterns, we show that the distinctiveness of contextual representations in the hippocampus and anterior and medial prefrontal cortex was associated with accurate recency memory. In contrast, overall activation in the perirhinal and lateral prefrontal cortices predicted whether an object would be judged more recent, regardless of accuracy. These results demonstrate that temporal information was encoded through at least two complementary neural mechanisms.

Source: Hippocampus

DOI: 10.1002/hipo.22571

Authors: Lucas J. Jenkins, Charan Ranganath

Institutions: University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, University of California, Davis

Language: English

Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health

Awards: Prefrontal Mechanisms of Temporal Context Encoding., G4952581766, Fractionating Prefrontal Contributions to Memory, G7437807517, G9000037035