Hippocampal-striatal functional connectivity supports processing of temporal expectations from associative memory

The hippocampus and dorsal striatum are both associated with temporal processing, but they are thought to play distinct roles. The hippocampus has been reported to contribute to storing temporal structure of events in memory, whereas the striatum contributes to temporal motor preparation and reward anticipation. Here, we asked whether the striatum cooperates with the hippocampus in processing the temporal context of memorized visual associations. In our task, participants were trained to implicitly form temporal expectations for one of two possible time intervals associated to specific cue-target associations, and subsequently were scanned using ultra-high-field 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, learned temporal expectations could be violated when the pairs were presented at either the associated or not-associated time intervals. When temporal expectations were met during testing trials, activity in left and right hippocampal subfields and right putamen decreased, compared to when temporal expectations were not met. Further, psycho-physiological interactions showed that functional connectivity between left hippocampal subfields and caudate decreased when temporal expectations were not met. Our results indicate that the hippocampus and striatum cooperate to process implicit temporal expectation from mnemonic associations. Our findings provide further support for a hippocampal-striatal network in temporal associative processing.