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Updated: Jan 20, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection
Published on: August 26, 2011
Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples linked to visual episodic recollection in humans
Yitzhak Norman1, Erin M Yeagle2, Simon Khuvis2
1Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Abstract:
Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) constitute one of the most synchronized activation events in the brain and play a critical role in offline memory consolidation. Yet their cognitive content and function during awake, conscious behavior remains unclear. We directly examined this question using intracranial recordings in human patients engaged in episodic free recall of previously viewed photographs. Our results reveal a content-selective increase in hippocampal ripple rate emerging 1 to 2 seconds prior to recall events. During recollection, high-order visual areas showed pronounced SWR-coupled reemergence of activation patterns associated with recalled content. Finally, the SWR rate during encoding predicted subsequent free-recall performance. These results point to a role for hippocampal SWRs in triggering spontaneous recollections and orchestrating the reinstatement of cortical representations during free episodic memory retrieval.
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