Visual Implicit Memory in the Left Hemisphere: Evidence from Patients with Callosotomies and Right Occipital Lobe Lesions

Identification of visually presented objects and words is facilitated by implicit memory for past visual experiences with those items. Several behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that this form of memory is dependent on perceptual processes localized in the right occipital lobe. We tested th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2001-07, Vol.12 (4), p.293-298
Main Authors: Yonelinas, A. P., Kroll, N. E. A., Baynes, K., Dobbins, I. G., Frederick, C. M., Knight, R. T., Gazzaniga, M. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Brain - physiology
Cerebral hemispheres
Cognition
Corpus Callosum - pathology
Corpus Callosum - surgery
Epilepsy - surgery
Experimental psychology
Female
Functional Laterality - physiology
Hemispheres
Humans
Implicit memory
Lesions
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Memory
Memory - physiology
Middle Aged
Neuroimaging
Neuropsychology
Occipital lobe
Occipital Lobe - pathology
Occipital Lobe - physiopathology
Panic attacks
Priming
Stroke - pathology
Stroke - physiopathology
Visual experiences
Visual fields
Visual Fields - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
Words
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Summary:Identification of visually presented objects and words is facilitated by implicit memory for past visual experiences with those items. Several behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that this form of memory is dependent on perceptual processes localized in the right occipital lobe. We tested this claim by examining implicit memory in patients with extensive right occipital lobe lesions, using lexical-decision, mirror-reading, picture-fragment, and word-fragment-completion tests, and found that these patients exhibited normal levels of priming. We also examined implicit memory in patients with complete callosotomies, using standard and divided-visual-field word-fragment-completion procedures, and found that the isolated left hemisphere exhibited normal priming effects. The results indicate that the right occipital lobe does not play a necessary role in visual implicit memory, and that the isolated left hemisphere can support normal levels of visual priming in a variety of tasks.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/1467-9280.00354