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The Journal of Neuroscience, April 26, 2006, 26(17):4596-4601; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1923-05.2006

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Brief Communications
Working Memory for Conjunctions Relies on the Medial Temporal Lobe

Ingrid R. Olson,¹ Katie Page,³ Katherine Sledge Moore,¹ Anjan Chatterjee,^1,2 and Mieke Verfaellie³

¹The Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania and ²Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadelphia, PA 19104, and ³Boston University School of Medicine and VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA 02130

Correspondence should be addressed to Ingrid R. Olson, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Room B51, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Email: iolson{at}psych.upenn.edu

A prominent theory of hippocampal function proposes that the hippocampus is importantly involved in relating or binding together separate pieces of information to form an episodic representation. This hypothesis has only been applied to studies of long-term memory because the paradigmatic view of the hippocampus is that it is not critical for short-term forms of memory. However, relational processing is important in many working memory tasks, especially tasks using visual stimuli. Here, we test the hypothesis that the medial temporal lobes are important for relational memory even over short delays. The task required patients with medial temporal lobe amnesia and controls to remember three objects, locations, or object-location conjunctions over 1 or 8 s delays. The results show that working memory for objects and locations was at normal levels, but that memory for conjunctions was severely impaired at 8 s delays. Additional analyses suggest that the hippocampus per se is critical for accurate conjunction working memory. We propose that the hippocampus is critically involved in memory for conjunctions at both short and long delays.

Key words: hippocampus; associative; amnesia; visual; memory; long-term; short-term; chunking; binding

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Received May 13, 2005; revised Jan. 10, 2006; accepted March 22, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Ingrid R. Olson, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Room B51, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Email: iolson{at}psych.upenn.edu

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