The Parahippocampal Cortex Mediates Spatial and Nonspatial Associations

The parahippocampal cortex (PHC) has been implicated in the processing of place-related information. It has also been implicated in episodic memory, even for items that are not related to unique places. How could the same cortical region mediate such seemingly different cognitive processes? Both pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2007-07, Vol.17 (7), p.1493-1503
Main Authors: Aminoff, E, Gronau, N, Bar, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Association Learning - physiology
associations
context
episodic memory
Evoked Potentials - physiology
Female
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Nerve Net - physiology
parahippocampal
Parahippocampal Gyrus - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods
PPA
Space Perception - physiology
spatial memory
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Summary:The parahippocampal cortex (PHC) has been implicated in the processing of place-related information. It has also been implicated in episodic memory, even for items that are not related to unique places. How could the same cortical region mediate such seemingly different cognitive processes? Both processes rely on contextual associations, and we therefore propose that the PHC should be viewed not as exclusively dedicated for analyzing place-related information, or as solely processing episodic memories, but instead as more generally playing a central role in contextual associative processing. To test this proposal, we created a novel learning paradigm to form new associations among meaningless visual patterns. These new associations were created to emulate either spatial or nonspatial contexts. Both spatial and nonspatial associations activated the PHC more than noncontextual items. Moreover, items from spatial contexts activated the posterior part of the PHC, whereas items from nonspatial contexts activated the anterior PHC. Therefore, we show that the PHC plays a role of processing contextual associations in general, and that these associations are not restricted to spatial information. By modifying the existing view of the PHC function accordingly, the seemingly contradicting processes that activate it can be reconciled under one overarching framework.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhl078