Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 21, Issue 4, April 2004, Pages 1337-1349
NeuroImage

Functional-anatomic correlates of remembering and knowing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.11.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Neural correlates of remembering were examined using event-related functional MRI (fMRI) in 20 young adults. A recognition paradigm based on the remember/know (RK) procedure was used to separately classify studied items that were correctly identified and accompanied by a conscious recollection of details about the study episode from studied items that were correctly identified in the absence of conscious recollection. To facilitate exploration of the basis of remember decisions, studied items were paired with pictures and sounds to encourage retrieval of specific content during scanned testing. Analyses using a priori regions of interest indicated that remembering recruited both regions that associate with the perception and/or decision that information is old and regions that associate preferentially with visual content, while knowing recruited regions associated with oldness, but did not recruit visual content regions. Exploratory analyses further indicated a functional dissociation across regions of parietal cortex that may aid to reconcile several divergent results in the literature. Lateral parietal regions responded preferentially to remember decisions, while a slightly medial region responded robustly to both remember and know decisions. Taken collectively, these results suggest that remembering and knowing associate with common processes supporting a perception and/or the decision that information is old. Remembering additionally recruits regions specific to retrieved content, which may participate to convey the vividness typical of recollective experience.

Section snippets

Subjects

Twenty five right-handed subjects from the Washington University community participated. Of these, one was excluded from analysis due to excessive movement during imaging (>1 mm within-run movement), two for failure to comply with task instructions, and three for having an insufficient number of know responses for functional imaging analyses (<9). The remaining 20 subjects (seven females) ranged in age from 18 to 32 years (mean 23 years), had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, were native

Behavioral results

Accuracy and response time (RT) data are listed in Table 1. Subjects correctly recognized 62% of the old items studied with pictures (Table 1). Of those correctly recognized old items, 63% were identified as having been remembered and 37% known. Subjects guessed or made no response on 8% of old and 11% of new items, and correctly rejected 59% of the new lures. FA-REM, FA-KNOW, and GUESS trials with no response were not included in subsequent imaging analyses. Two-tailed t tests showed that

Discussion

The primary findings in this experiment were that remembering and knowing both activated a left intraparietal region that associates with the perception or decision that information is old, and remembering additionally activated content-based anterior fusiform regions that associate with processing visual object information. More specifically, items correctly identified as old corresponded with increased activity in left intraparietal cortex at or near BA 40/39, relative to missed old and

Acknowledgements

We thank Larry Jacoby, Kathleen McDermott, Luigi Maccotta, Fran Miezin, Steve Petersen, Jeff Toth, Endel Tulving, and Katerina Velanova for helpful comments, assistance, and advice. Denise Head assisted with data collection. Avi Snyder helped develop post-processing software and Tom Conturo and Erbil Akbudak supplied imaging sequences. David Van Essen provided Caret software. Two anonymous reviewers provided helpful suggestions. This research was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical

References (103)

  • J.M Gardiner et al.

    Experiences of remembering, knowing, and guessing

    Conscious. Cogn.

    (1998)
  • A Ishai et al.

    Distributed neural systems for the generation of visual images

    Neuron

    (2000)
  • L.L Jacoby

    A process dissociation framework: separating automatic from intentional uses of memory

    J. Mem. Lang.

    (1991)
  • S Kastner et al.

    Increased activity in human visual cortex during directed attention in the absence of visual stimulation

    Neuron

    (1999)
  • S Köhler et al.

    Networks of domain-specific and general regions involved in episodic memory for spatial location and object identity

    Neuropsychologia

    (1998)
  • S Konishi et al.

    Neural correlates of episodic retrieval success

    NeuroImage

    (2000)
  • S Konishi et al.

    Transient activation during block transition

    NeuroImage

    (2001)
  • W Koutstaal et al.

    Perceptual specificity in visual object priming: functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence for a laterality difference in fusiform cortex

    Neuropsychologia

    (2001)
  • L Maccotta et al.

    Rapid self-paced event-related functional MRI: feasibility and implications of stimulus-versus response-locked timing

    NeuroImage

    (2001)
  • A Maril et al.

    Feeling-of-knowing in episodic memory: an event-related fMRI study

    NeuroImage

    (2003)
  • F.M Miezin et al.

    Characterizing the hemodynamic response: effects of presentation rate, sampling procedure, and the possibility of ordering brain activity based on relative timing

    NeuroImage

    (2000)
  • D.A Moscovitch et al.

    Material-specific deficits in “remembering” in patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy and excisions

    Neuropsychologia

    (2002)
  • S.F Nolde et al.

    The role of prefrontal cortex during tests of episodic memory

    Trends Cogn. Sci.

    (1998)
  • L Nyberg et al.

    Reactivation of motor brain areas during explicit memory for actions

    NeuroImage

    (2001)
  • C Ranganath et al.

    Prefrontal activity associated with working memory and episodic long-term memory

    Neuropsychologia

    (2003)
  • M.D Rugg et al.

    Event-related potentials and the recollection of associative information

    Cogn. Brain Res.

    (1996)
  • M.D Rugg et al.

    Neural correlates of retrieval processing in the prefrontal cortex during recognition and exclusion tasks

    Neuropsychologia

    (2003)
  • D.L Schacter et al.

    Late onset of anterior prefrontal activity during true and false recognition: an event-related fMRI study

    NeuroImage

    (1997)
  • A.Z Snyder

    Difference image versus ratio image error function forms in PET–PET realignment

  • D.C Van Essen et al.

    Mapping visual cortex in monkeys and humans using surface-based atlases

    Vision Res.

    (2001)
  • A.D Wagner

    Working memory contributions to human learning and remembering

    Neuron

    (1999)
  • E.L Wilding et al.

    Event-related potentials and the recognition memory exclusion task

    Neuropsychologia

    (1997)
  • E.L Wilding et al.

    Recognition memory with and without retrieval of context: an event-related potential study

    Neuropsychologia

    (1995)
  • S.V Astafiev et al.

    Functional organization of human intraparietal and frontal cortex for attending, looking, and pointing

    J. Neurosci.

    (2003)
  • P.A Bandettini et al.

    Processing strategies for time-course data sets in functional MRI of the human brain

    Magn. Reson. Med.

    (1993)
  • F.C Bartlett

    Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology

    (1932)
  • G.M Boynton et al.

    Linear systems analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging in human V1

    J. Neurosci.

    (1996)
  • R.L Buckner et al.

    The cognitive neuroscience of remembering

    Nat. Rev., Neurosci.

    (2001)
  • R.L Buckner et al.

    Functional MRI evidence for a role of frontal and inferior temporal cortex in amodal components of priming

    Brain

    (2000)
  • P.W Burgess et al.

    Confabulation and the control of recollection

    Memory

    (1996)
  • R Cabeza et al.

    Imaging cognition II: an empirical review of 275 PET and fMRI studies

    J. Cogn. Neurosci.

    (2000)
  • S Cansino et al.

    Brain activity underlying encoding and retrieval of source memory

    Cereb. Cortex

    (2002)
  • J.D Cohen et al.

    PsyScope: a new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments

    Behav. Res. Meth. Instrum. Comput.

    (1993)
  • J.D Connolly et al.

    Human fMRI evidence for the neural correlates of preparatory set

    Nat. Neurosci.

    (2002)
  • T.E Conturo et al.

    Sensitivity optimization and experimental design in functional magnetic resonance imaging

    Abstr. - Soc. Neurosci.

    (1996)
  • A.M Dale et al.

    Selective averaging of rapidly presented individual trials using fMRI

    Hum. Brain Mapp.

    (1997)
  • R Desimone et al.

    Multiple memory systems in the visual cortex

  • M D'Esposito et al.

    Prefrontal cortical contributions to working memory: evidence from event-related fMRI studies

    Exp. Brain Res.

    (2000)
  • H.A Drury et al.

    Computerized mappings of the cerebral cortex. A multiresolution flattening method and a surface-based coordinate system

    J. Cogn. Neurosci.

    (1996)
  • E Düzel et al.

    Event-related brain potential correlates of two states of conscious awareness in memory

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

    (1997)
  • Cited by (368)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text