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Published on: March 2, 2015
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Decoding the content of recollection within the core recollection network and beyond
Preston P Thakral1, Tracy H Wang2, Michael D Rugg3
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, USA.
Summary
Neural activity patterns in recollection regions contain information about past events, even for familiar (know) responses. Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) reveals content reinstatement beyond simple recollection signals.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- Recollection, the retrieval of detailed past event information, is linked to consistent neural activity in a core recollection network.
- It remains unclear if this neural activity specifically encodes the content of recollected information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity within core recollection regions contains information about studied content.
- To determine if retrieval-related neural activity demonstrates content-specific 'reinstatement' effects.
Main Methods:
- Employed multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) on fMRI data during memory retrieval tasks.
- Participants studied words and objects, then responded 'remember' (recollection), 'know' (familiarity), or 'new'.
Main Results:
- MVPA successfully decoded the study history of 'remembered' items in most core recollection regions and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
- Crucially, the study history of 'known' items was decoded with similar accuracy, dissociating content information from mean signal strength.
- This indicates that neural regions involved in familiarity also carry content-specific information.
Conclusions:
- Core recollection network regions, and even regions insensitive to univariate recollection effects, contain information about recollected content.
- Neural reinstatement, as measured by MVPA, is not exclusive to recollection and is also present for familiarity.
- Findings challenge the notion that reinstatement is solely a signature of recollection, highlighting its role in familiarity as well.
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