The Role of Visual Association Cortex in Associative Memory Formation across Development
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Associative learning underlies the formation of new episodic memories. Associative memory improves across development, and this age-related improvement is supported by the development of the hippocampus and pFC. Recent work, however, additionally suggests a role for visual association cortex in the formation of associative memories. This study investigated the role of category-preferential visual processing regions in associative memory across development using a paired associate learning task in a sample of 56 youths (age 6-19 years). Participants were asked to bind an emotional face with an object while undergoing fMRI scanning. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test. We first investigated age-related changes in neural recruitment and found linear age-related increases in activation in lateral occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus, which are involved in visual processing of objects and faces, respectively. Furthermore, greater activation in these visual processing regions was associated with better subsequent memory for pairs over and above the effect of age and of hippocampal and pFC activation on performance. Recruitment of these visual processing regions mediated the association between age and memory performance, over and above the effects of hippocampal activation. Taken together, these findings extend the existing literature to suggest that greater recruitment of category-preferential visual processing regions during encoding of associative memories is a neural mechanism explaining improved memory across development.
DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01202
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: International Mental Health Research Organization, National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Jacobs Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: G1944932954, Long-Term Memory-Guided Attention: Development, Environmental Factors, and Neural Underpinnings, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, Child Trauma and the Development of Neural Systems Underlying Emotion Regulation, Deprivation and Threat: Dimensions of Early Experience and Neural Development
OpenAlex ID: W2765193028