QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, November 2, 2005, 25(44):10239-10246; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2704-05.2005

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (31) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Barense, M. D. Articles by Graham, K. S. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Barense, M. D. Articles by Graham, K. S.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Functional Specialization in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe

Morgan D. Barense,¹ Timothy J. Bussey,² Andy C. H. Lee,¹ Timothy T. Rogers,¹ R. Rhys Davies,³ Lisa M. Saksida,² Elisabeth A. Murray,⁴ and Kim S. Graham¹

¹Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge CB2 2EF, United Kingdom, ²Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom, ³Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, United Kingdom, and ⁴Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Investigations of memory in rats and nonhuman primates have demonstrated functional specialization within the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a set of heavily interconnected structures including the hippocampal formation and underlying entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices. Most studies in humans, however, especially in patients with brain damage, suggest that the human MTL is a unitary memory system supporting all types of declarative memory, our conscious memory for facts and events. To resolve this discrepancy, amnesic patients with either selective hippocampal damage or more extensive MTL damage were tested on variations of an object discrimination task adapted from the nonhuman primate literature. Although both groups were equally impaired on standard recall-based memory tasks, they exhibited different profiles of performance on the object discrimination test, arguing against a unitary view of MTL function. Cases with selective hippocampal damage performed normally, whereas individuals with broader MTL lesions were impaired. Furthermore, deficits in this latter group were related not to the number of discriminations to be learned and remembered, but to the degree of "feature ambiguity," a property of visual discriminations that can emerge when features are part of both rewarded and unrewarded stimuli. These findings resolve contradictions between published studies in humans and animals and introduce a new way of characterizing the impairments that arise after damage to the MTL.

Key words: amnesia; hippocampus; medial temporal lobe; perirhinal cortex; object discrimination; declarative memory; perception; feature conjunctions

---

Received Feb 11, 2005; revised September 2, 2005; accepted September 13, 2005.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				L. M. Saksida Remembering Outside the Box Science, July 3, 2009; 325(5936): 40 - 41. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				E. B. O'Neil, A. D. Cate, and S. Kohler Perirhinal Cortex Contributes to Accuracy in Recognition Memory and Perceptual Discriminations J. Neurosci., July 1, 2009; 29(26): 8329 - 8334. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. R. Preston and J. D. E. Gabrieli Dissociation between Explicit Memory and Configural Memory in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe Cereb Cortex, September 1, 2008; 18(9): 2192 - 2207. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				E. J. Barbeau, M. J. Taylor, J. Regis, P. Marquis, P. Chauvel, and C. Liegeois-Chauvel Spatio temporal Dynamics of Face Recognition Cereb Cortex, May 1, 2008; 18(5): 997 - 1009. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Y. EZZYAT and I. R. OLSON The medial temporal lobe and visual working memory: Comparisons across tasks, delays, and visual similarity Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci, March 1, 2008; 8(1): 32 - 40. [Abstract] [PDF]

				A. C. H. Lee, V. L. Scahill, and K. S. Graham Activating the Medial Temporal Lobe during Oddity Judgment for Faces and Scenes Cereb Cortex, March 1, 2008; 18(3): 683 - 696. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. Behrmann, G. Avidan, F. Gao, and S. Black Structural Imaging Reveals Anatomical Alterations in Inferotemporal Cortex in Congenital Prosopagnosia Cereb Cortex, October 1, 2007; 17(10): 2354 - 2363. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				R. A. Cowell, T. J. Bussey, and L. M. Saksida Why Does Brain Damage Impair Memory? A Connectionist Model of Object Recognition Memory in Perirhinal Cortex. J. Neurosci., November 22, 2006; 26(47): 12186 - 12197. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				K. S. Graham, V. L. Scahill, M. Hornberger, M. D. Barense, A. C. H. Lee, T. J. Bussey, and L. M. Saksida Abnormal categorization and perceptual learning in patients with hippocampal damage. J. Neurosci., July 19, 2006; 26(29): 7547 - 7554. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. C. H. Lee, M. J. Buckley, D. Gaffan, T. Emery, J. R. Hodges, and K. S. Graham Differentiating the roles of the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex in processes beyond long-term declarative memory: a double dissociation in dementia. J. Neurosci., May 10, 2006; 26(19): 5198 - 5203. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help