Making Memories: Brain Activity that Predicts How Well Visual Experience Will be Remembered

Experiences are remembered or forgotten, but the neural determinants for the mnemonic fate of experience are unknown. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to identify specific brain activations that differentiated between visual experiences that were later remembered well, re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 1998-08, Vol.281 (5380), p.1185-1187
Main Authors: Brewer, James B., Zhao, Zuo, Desmond, John E., Glover, Gary H., John D. E. Gabrieli
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Behavioral neuroscience
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain - physiology
Brain damage
Brain Mapping
Correlation
Declarative memory
Evidence
Eyes & eyesight
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Lesions
Localization (Brain function)
Localization of functions
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Memory
Memory - physiology
Memory encoding
Memory recall
Memory, Short-Term
Neurological Impairments
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Photography
Physiological aspects
Prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Stimuli
Temporal lobe
Temporal Lobe - physiology
Visual Perception
Visual Stimuli
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Description
Summary:Experiences are remembered or forgotten, but the neural determinants for the mnemonic fate of experience are unknown. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to identify specific brain activations that differentiated between visual experiences that were later remembered well, remembered less well, or forgotten. During scanning of medial temporal lobe and frontal lobe regions, subjects viewed complex, color photographs. Subjects later received a test of memory for the photographs. The magnitudes of focal activations in right prefrontal cortex and in bilateral parahippocampal cortex predicted which photographs were later remembered well, remembered less well, or forgotten.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.281.5380.1185