The Hippocampal Formation Participates in Novel Picture Encoding: Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Considerable evidence exists to support the hypothesis that the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures are crucial for the encoding and storage of information in long-term memory. Few human imaging studies, however, have successfully shown signal intensity changes in these areas dur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 1996-08, Vol.93 (16), p.8660-8665
Main Authors: Stern, Chantal E., Corkin, Suzanne, González, R. Gilberto, Guimaraes, Alexander R., Baker, John R., Jennings, Peggy J., Carr, Cindy A., Sugiura, Robert M., Vedantham, Vasanth, Rosen, Bruce R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Anatomy
Behavioral neuroscience
Cognition - physiology
Entorhinal cortex
Female
Form Perception - physiology
Hippocampus
Hippocampus - physiology
Humans
Imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Memory
Memory - physiology
Memory encoding
Primates
Space life sciences
Temporal lobe
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Considerable evidence exists to support the hypothesis that the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures are crucial for the encoding and storage of information in long-term memory. Few human imaging studies, however, have successfully shown signal intensity changes in these areas during encoding or retrieval. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we studied normal human subjects while they performed a novel picture encoding task. High-speed echo-planar imaging techniques evaluated fMRI signal changes throughout the brain. During the encoding of novel pictures, statistically significant increases in fMRI signal were observed bilaterally in the posterior hippocampal formation and parahippocampal gyrus and in the lingual and fusiform gyri. To our knowledge, this experiment is the first fMRI study to show robust signal changes in the human hippocampal region. It also provides evidence that the encoding of novel, complex pictures depends upon an interaction between ventral cortical regions, specialized for object vision, and the hippocampal formation and parahippocampal gyrus, specialized for long-term memory.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.93.16.8660