Brain Regions Involved in Object-Location Memory in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis of Task-Based fMRI

The ability to remember where objects are located is a fundamental cognitive function particularly vulnerable to aging and neurodegenerative disease. Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has combined object-location memory (OLM) with broader spatial-memory and -navigation tasks, resulting in inconsistent findings. This systematic review and coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis isolated OLM to characterize brain regions engaged during encoding and retrieval in healthy adults, with additional exploratory analyses of age effects. Searches of PubMed, PsycInfo, and the Cochrane Library identified 21 eligible task-based fMRI studies comprising 622 participants. Twelve studies contributed to an encoding ALE, which identified significant spatial convergence in left and right ventral occipitotemporal regions encompassing the fusiform and parahippocampal gyri. The left cluster was supported by 8 of 12 experiments, survived all leave-one-experiment-out iterations, and was recovered by an independent coordinate-based framework, supporting a robust ventral occipitotemporal substrate for OLM encoding. An OLM retrieval ALE including four studies yielded no significant convergence, most likely reflecting the limited number of eligible studies. Retrieval findings were therefore synthesized narratively. These studies most frequently implicated the hippocampus and precuneus, suggesting a different regional pattern from encoding, although the phases were not statistically compared. Only three studies directly compared age groups, suggesting altered hippocampal engagement during retrieval in older adults. By isolating OLM from broader spatial-memory constructs, this review identifies a robust encoding substrate while highlighting current research gaps that need to be addressed. This review was preregistered on PROSPERO (CRD420251023695).