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Research Articles, Behavioral/Cognitive

Visual Sampling Predicts Hippocampal Activity

Zhong-Xu Liu, Kelly Shen, Rosanna K. Olsen and Jennifer D. Ryan
Journal of Neuroscience 18 January 2017, 37 (3) 599-609; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2610-16.2016
Zhong-Xu Liu
1Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A 2E1, and
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Kelly Shen
1Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A 2E1, and
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Rosanna K. Olsen
1Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A 2E1, and
2Department of Psychology and
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Jennifer D. Ryan
1Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A 2E1, and
2Department of Psychology and
3Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3
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Abstract

Eye movements serve to accumulate information from the visual world, contributing to the formation of coherent memory representations that support cognition and behavior. The hippocampus and the oculomotor network are well connected anatomically through an extensive set of polysynaptic pathways. However, the extent to which visual sampling behavior is related to functional responses in the hippocampus during encoding has not been studied directly in human neuroimaging. In the current study, participants engaged in a face processing task while brain responses were recorded with fMRI and eye movements were monitored simultaneously. The number of gaze fixations that a participant made on a given trial was correlated significantly with hippocampal activation such that more fixations were associated with stronger hippocampal activation. Similar results were also found in the fusiform face area, a face-selective perceptual processing region. Notably, the number of fixations was associated with stronger hippocampal activation when the presented faces were novel, but not when the faces were repeated. Increases in fixations during viewing of novel faces also led to larger repetition-related suppression in the hippocampus, indicating that this fixation–hippocampal relationship may reflect the ongoing development of lasting representations. Together, these results provide novel empirical support for the idea that visual exploration and hippocampal binding processes are inherently linked.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The hippocampal and oculomotor networks have each been studied extensively for their roles in the binding of information and gaze function, respectively. Despite the evidence that individuals with amnesia whose damage includes the hippocampus show alterations in their eye movement patterns and recent findings that the two systems are anatomically connected, it has not been demonstrated whether visual exploration is related to hippocampal activity in neurologically intact adults. In this combined fMRI–eye-tracking study, we show how hippocampal responses scale with the number of gaze fixations made during viewing of novel, but not repeated, faces. These findings provide new evidence suggesting that the hippocampus plays an important role in the binding of information, as sampled by gaze fixations, during visual exploration.

  • eye movements
  • gaze fixations
  • hippocampus
  • memory encoding
  • oculomotor system
  • visual exploration
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The Journal of Neuroscience: 37 (3)
Journal of Neuroscience
Vol. 37, Issue 3
18 Jan 2017
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Visual Sampling Predicts Hippocampal Activity
Zhong-Xu Liu, Kelly Shen, Rosanna K. Olsen, Jennifer D. Ryan
Journal of Neuroscience 18 January 2017, 37 (3) 599-609; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2610-16.2016

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Visual Sampling Predicts Hippocampal Activity
Zhong-Xu Liu, Kelly Shen, Rosanna K. Olsen, Jennifer D. Ryan
Journal of Neuroscience 18 January 2017, 37 (3) 599-609; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2610-16.2016
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Keywords

  • eye movements
  • gaze fixations
  • hippocampus
  • memory encoding
  • oculomotor system
  • visual exploration

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