Immediate memory for “when, where and what”: Short‐delay retrieval using dynamic naturalistic material

Abstract

We investigated the neural correlates supporting three kinds of memory judgments after very short delays using naturalistic material. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments, subjects watched short movie clips, and after a short retention (1.5–2.5 s), made mnemonic judgments about specific aspects of the clips. In Experiment 1, subjects were presented with two scenes and required to either choose the scene that happened earlier in the clip (“scene‐chronology”), or with a correct spatial arrangement (“scene‐layout”), or that had been shown (“scene‐recognition”). To segregate activity specific to seen versus unseen stimuli, in Experiment 2 only one probe image was presented (either target or foil). Across the two experiments, we replicated three patterns underlying the three specific forms of memory judgment. The precuneus was activated during temporal‐order retrieval, the superior parietal cortex was activated bilaterally for spatial‐related configuration judgments, whereas the medial frontal cortex during scene recognition. Conjunction analyses with a previous study that used analogous retrieval tasks, but a much longer delay (>1 day), demonstrated that this dissociation pattern is independent of retention delay. We conclude that analogous brain regions mediate task‐specific retrieval across vastly different delays, consistent with the proposal of scale‐invariance in episodic memory retrieval. Hum Brain Mapp 36:2495–2513, 2015. © 2015 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language in Context: MEG Evidence for Modality-General and -Specific Responses to Reference Resolution

“…Although our design by itself cannot exclude this possibility, it is rendered less plausible when considering other research: short-term memory tasks for visual features tend to engage lateral rather than medial parietal regions (Todd and Marois, 2004; Kawasaki et al, 2008; Bettencourt and Xu, 2015), nor do auditory short-term memory tasks tend to engage the medial parietal lobe (Kumar et al, 2016). On the other hand, medial parietal regions are recruited by tasks that involve judgments of complex spatial or temporal relations (Galati et al, 2010; Kwok and Macaluso, 2015), which is more consistent with an involvement in relational models as argued above. Furthermore, an explanation based solely on short-term memory access might have difficulty accounting for results from the hemodynamic studies discussed above, which implicated the medial parietal lobe in referential language processing while using linguistic stimuli.…”

Neurobiological substrates of cognitive rigidity and autonomic inflexibility in generalized anxiety disorder

“…This was particularly the case for regions which form part of the default mode network, including the precuneus, which is implicated in episodic memory, visuospatial processing, self-reflection and aspects of consciousness (Fox, Spreng, Ellamil, Andrews-Hanna, & Christoff, 2015;Hannawi, Lindquist, Caffo, Sair, & Stevens, 2015;Kwok & Macaluso, 2015). Target appearance also attenuated activity within motor, auditory, and somatosensory areas, putatively reflecting the rich multisensory nature of internal thoughts (e.g., Fox, Nijeboer, Solomonova, Domhoff, & Christoff, 2013;Hasenkamp et al, 2012).…”

Load effects on spatial working memory performance are linked to distributed alpha and beta oscillations

“…All maps are shown at a threshold of p < .01, cluster-corrected [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] high-load SWM processing. Similar parietal regions have been tied to the top-down control of spatial attention, and the retention of spatial features (Corbetta, Kincade, & Shulman, 2002;Honkanen et al, 2015;Rizzolatti & Matelli, 2003;Rottschy et al, 2013), while comparable superior temporal regions have been linked to the processing of relations between simultaneously presented stimuli (Kwok & Macaluso, 2015;Park et al, 2011;Raabe, Fischer, Bernhardt, & Greenlee, 2013).…”