Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex contributes to successful relational memory encoding.

Linda J Murray1, Charan Ranganath

  • 1Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA. lmurray@ucdavis.edu

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|May 18, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Natural language processing captures memory content associated with shared neural patterns at encoding and retrieval.

Communications psychology·2026
Same author

Guess quality moderates how semantic relatedness influences the pretesting effect.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2025
Same author

Anticipatory eye gaze as a marker of memory.

Communications psychology·2025
Same author

Saccades track visual associative memory processes with precision and sensitivity.

Brain communications·2025
Same author

Memory out of context: Spacing effects and decontextualization in a computational model of the medial temporal lobe.

Psychological review·2024
Same author

A complementary learning systems model of how sleep moderates retrieval practice effects.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2024

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) aids long-term memory (LTM) formation by processing item relationships. Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) supports general LTM encoding, while DLPFC excels at associative memory.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuroimaging
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Previous neuroimaging studies suggest ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) involvement in long-term memory (LTM) encoding.
  • The role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in LTM formation is less understood, with some studies indicating no contribution.
  • A hypothesis posits that DLPFC may be crucial for relational processing during encoding, thereby enhancing associative LTM.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the specific role of the DLPFC in LTM formation, particularly in the context of relational processing.
  • To differentiate the contributions of DLPFC and VLPFC to item memory versus associative memory.
  • To test whether DLPFC activity during encoding predicts successful memory for associations.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to measure brain activity during memory encoding.
  • Participants encoded unrelated word pairs under two conditions: item-specific judgments and relational judgments.
  • Behavioral measures assessed recognition memory for individual items and for word pairs (associations).

Main Results:

  • Associative recognition was significantly higher for word pairs encoded using relational judgments compared to item-specific judgments.
  • DLPFC activation was greater during relational encoding and predicted successful memory for associations, but not item memory.
  • VLPFC activation was also greater during relational encoding and predicted successful memory for both items and associations.

Conclusions:

  • The DLPFC contributes to LTM by facilitating the processing of relationships between items during encoding, crucial for associative memory.
  • The VLPFC plays a more general role in promoting successful LTM formation, supporting both item and associative memory.
  • These findings refine our understanding of prefrontal cortex contributions to memory, highlighting distinct roles for DLPFC and VLPFC.