Neural bases of autobiographical support for episodic recollection of faces

Abstract

Incidental retrieval of autobiographical knowledge can provide rich contextual support for episodic recollection of a recent event. We examined the neural bases of these two processes by performing fMRI scanning during a recognition memory test for faces that were unfamiliar, famous, or personally known. The presence of pre-experimental knowledge of a face was incidental to the task, but nonetheless resulted in improved performance. Two distinct networks of activation were associated with correct recollection of a face's prior presentation (recollection hits vs. correct rejections) on one hand, and with pre-experimental knowledge about it (famous or personally known vs. unfamiliar faces) on the other. The former included mid/posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, and ventral striatum. The latter included bilateral hippocampus, retrosplenial, and ventromedial prefrontal cortices. Anterior and medial thalamic activations showed an interaction between both effects, driven by increased activation for recollection of unfamiliar faces. When recollecting the presentation of a famous or personally known face, hippocampal activation increased with participants' ratings of how well they felt they knew the person shown. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed significantly greater activation for personally known than famous faces. Our results indicate a dissociation between the involvement of retrosplenial vs. mid/posterior cingulate and precuneus in memory tasks. They also indicate that, during recognition memory experiments, the hippocampus supports incidental retrieval of pre-experimental knowledge about the stimuli presented. This type of knowledge likely underlies the additional recollection found for prior presentation of well known stimuli compared with novel ones and may link hippocampal activation at encoding to subsequent memory performance more generally.

Effects of pre-experimental knowledge on recognition memory

“…This finding replicates the findings of Klatzky and Forrest (1984) and Trinkler et al (2009) who also documented advantages in recognition memory for pre-experimentally known faces. A prominent theory of memory, DPT posits that recognition judgements are based on either recollection (the retrieval of contextual details about an encoding event), or familiarity (the feeling that an item has been experienced previously without retrieval of any additional information).…”

“…Surprisingly, the impact of pre-experimental knowledge of items on performance of recognition memory tasks has only rarely been studied. Nevertheless, this factor may have a critical influence, not only on recognition performance, but also on the brain structures that are recruited during encoding and retrieval (Bird and Burgess 2008;Trinkler et al 2009;Poppenk et al 2010). The present study aimed to characterize the impact of pre-experimental knowledge on recognition memory, in particular on the parameters used to fit recognition memory data according to two models based on a dual-process theory ([DPT] recollection and familiarity) and an unequal variance signal detection ([UVSD] the magnitude and variance of the memory strength signal).…”

“…Interestingly, patients with hippocampal damage typically perform normally on forced-choice recognition of unfamiliar faces (Bird and Burgess 2008), unless tested after a 24-h delay (Reed and Squire 1997). In an imaging study of face recognition memory, pre-experimentally known faces were found to activate the hippocampus whether they were targets or foils, whereas hippocampal activity did not differentiate the old/new status of test items (Trinkler et al 2009). We suggested that representations of pre-experimentally known faces include associated information (mediated by the hippocampus), which boosts recognition performance.…”

“…Several researchers have suggested that the hippocampus is necessary for recollection but not for familiarity. Given that the hippocampus is specifically activated by the pre-experimentally known faces (Trinkler et al 2009), and that unfamiliar face recognition memory is not hippocampal dependent (Bird and Burgess 2008), the boost in recognition memory for familiar faces might reflect a selective boost in recollection. This proposal is supported by studies that have manipulated test item familiarity by pre-exposing a subset of the items before encoding.…”

Human medial temporal lobe neurons respond preferentially to personally relevant images

“…In addition, incidental recollection of related autobiographical associations can lead to performance advantages such as enhanced memory and speeded responding (3). This incidental recollection has been shown to occur in the context of identifying famous people (3), and has also been shown to involve the hippocampus (4,5). Furthermore, famous faces and names have long been used to query the integrity of recent and remote semantic memory in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) (3,(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11).…”