Effective connectivity of the anterior hippocampus predicts recollection confidence during natural memory retrieval

Abstract

Human interactions with the world are influenced by memories of recent events. This effect, often triggered by perceptual cues, occurs naturally and without conscious effort. However, the neuroscience of involuntary memory in a dynamic milieu has received much less attention than the mechanisms of voluntary retrieval with deliberate purpose. Here, we investigate the neural processes driven by naturalistic cues that relate to, and presumably trigger the retrieval of recent experiences. Viewing the continuation of recently viewed clips evokes greater bilateral activation in anterior hippocampus, precuneus and angular gyrus than naïve clips. While these regions manifest reciprocal connectivity, continued viewing specifically modulates the effective connectivity from the anterior hippocampus to the precuneus. The strength of this modulation predicts participants’ confidence in later voluntary recall of news details. Our study reveals network mechanisms of dynamic, involuntary memory retrieval and its relevance to metacognition in a rich context resembling everyday life.

Decreased integration of EEG source-space networks in disorders of consciousness

“…The first is the left precuneus, a key hub structure from the default mode network (DMN). The precuneus is engaged in self-related processing (Zhang and Chiang-shan, 2012), episodic memory (Ren et al, 2018), awareness and conscious information processing (Kjaer et al, 2001; Long et al, 2016; Vogt and Laureys, 2005). Also, it has been shown that patients with UWS having residual functional connectivity of DMN and external awareness networks might be misdiagnosed, since such functional connectivity is an indicator of covert consciousness (Naro et al, 2017).…”

Functional specialization within the inferior parietal lobes across cognitive domains

“…Notably, there is a scarcity of existing studies directly devoted to investigating the left versus right IPL in several different psychological tasks (see 42,43 for exceptions). The few existing studies committed to the effective connectivity of the IPL mainly focused on task-related connectivity changes between an IPL subregion and other areas of a specialized network for a single cognitive domain, typically in one hemisphere only 34,[44][45][46] . As such, our results usher towards a broader perspective.…”

Decreased integration of EEG source-space networks in disorders of consciousness

“…The first is the left precuneus, a key hub structure from the default mode network (DMN). The precuneus is engaged in self-related processing (Zhang and Chiang-shan, 2012), episodic memory (Ren et al, 2018), awareness and conscious information processing (Kjaer et al, 2001;Vogt and Laureys, 2005;Long et al, 2016). The second is a portion of the left orbitofrontal cortex, which is thought to encode predicted values of potential rewards (Gottfried et al, 2003).…”