Unexpected novelty and familiarity orienting responses in lateral parietal cortex during recognition judgment

Abstract

The role of lateral parietal cortex during recognition memory is heavily debated. We examined parietal activation during an Explicit Memory Cueing recognition paradigm that biases participants towards expecting novel or familiar stimuli on a trial-by-trial basis using anticipatory cues (“Likely Old”, “Likely New”), compared to trials with neutral cues (“????”). Three qualitatively distinct patterns were observed in the left lateral parietal cortex. An unexpected novelty response occurred in left anterior intraparietal cortex (IPS)/post-central gyrus (PoCG) in which greater activation was observed for new versus old materials following the “Likely Old” cue, but not following the “Likely New” cue. In contrast, anterior angular gyrus demonstrated an unexpected familiarity response with greater activation for old versus new materials following the “Likely New” cue, but not the “Likely Old” cue. Thus these two regions demonstrated increased responses that were selective for either new or old materials respectively, but only when they were unexpected. In contrast, a mid IPS area demonstrated greater response for whichever class of memoranda was unanticipated given the cue condition (an unexpected memory response). Analogous response patterns in regions outside of parietal cortex, and the results of a resting state connectivity analysis, suggested these three response patterns were associated with visuo-spatial orienting following unexpected novelty, source monitoring operations following unexpected familiarity, and general executive control processes following violated expectations. These findings support a Memory Orienting Model of the left lateral parietal cortex in which the region is linked to the investigation of unexpected novelty or familiarity in the environment.

Neural Signatures of Test-Potentiated Learning in Parietal Cortex

“…The pattern of activity in left pIPL/dorsal AG is consistent with a recent model proposed by Jaeger et al (2013) suggesting that this region may play a role in involuntary orienting when a stimulus is unexpectedly familiar. The "memory orienting model" (Jaeger et al, 2013) is the most recent in a set of theories that propose to explain how the parietal cortex contributes to memory retrieval Figure 5.…”

“…A previous model proposed by Cabeza et al (2008) dubbed the "attention to memory model" has some conceptual similarities to the memory orienting model in that it posits a role for parietal cortex in "bottom-up" attention. However, the locations within ventral parietal cortex that Cabeza et al (2008) refer to, most notably the supramarginal gyrus and AG, are distinct from left pIPL/dorsal AG as emerging from the current dataset, as well as the region defined by Jaeger et al (2013) and Nelson et al (2010). Therefore, the attention to memory model is not anatomically relevant to the data presented here.…”

“…The "memory orienting model" (Jaeger et al, 2013) is the most recent in a set of theories that propose to explain how the parietal cortex contributes to memory retrieval Figure 5. The region in left pIPL/dorsal AG (yellow sphere) is shown along with a scatterplot of New Learning as a function of percent signal change across subjects (n ϭ 24) for items that were not initially recalled (Initial Test (Ϫ)).…”

Pupil dilation during recognition memory: Isolating unexpected recognition from judgment uncertainty

“…Hence, one should see increased dilation during correct responses to both invalidly cued new materials and invalidly cued old materials because in both cases judgment uncertainty is heightened compared to the valid cue conditions, and thus the effort required to reach a correct conclusion will also increase. This is because invalid cueing for both old and new materials has been shown to adversely affect judgment accuracy, speed and confidence, given that it sets up a conflict between recovered memorial signals and expectations (Jaeger et al, 2012;Jaeger, Konkel, & Dobbins, 2013;Konkel, Selmeczy, & Dobbins, 2015;O'Connor et al, 2010;Selmeczy & Dobbins, 2012). Increased dilation for both invalid cue types would converge with demonstrations of increased dilation during Stroop (Laeng et al, 2011) and Simon conflict manipulations (Steenbergen & Band, 2013), and in turn would support the idea that the previously reported pupil old/new effect indeed reflected the amount of volitional effort expended, which just happens to be larger on average for old versus new recognition conclusions in standard, uncued recognition paradigms.…”

Parietal lesion effects on cued recall following pair associate learnin g

“…Suggestions regarding the contribution of parietal areas to memory include attentional functions (e.g. Cabeza, 2008;Cabeza et al, 2011;Ciaramelli et al, 2010Ciaramelli et al, , , 2008, expectation and salience (Buchsbaum et al, 2011;Jaeger et al, 2013;O'Connor et al, 2010), retrieval buffering (e.g., Rugg, 2008, 2009a,b), multimodal integration (e.g., Shimamura, 2011) and subjective aspects of remembering (e.g., Hower et al, 2014;Simons et al, 2010;reviewed by Levy (2012)). …”