Recollection and familiarity in recognition memory: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study - PubMed (original) (raw)

Clinical Trial

R N Henson et al. J Neurosci. 1999.

Abstract

The question of whether recognition memory judgments with and without recollection reflect dissociable patterns of brain activity is unresolved. We used event-related, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of 12 healthy volunteers to measure hemodynamic responses associated with both studying and recognizing words. Volunteers made one of three judgments to each word during recognition: whether they recollected seeing it during study (R judgments), whether they experienced a feeling of familiarity in the absence of recollection (K judgments), or whether they did not remember seeing it during study (N judgments). Both R and K judgments for studied words were associated with enhanced responses in left prefrontal and left parietal cortices relative to N judgments for unstudied words. The opposite pattern was observed in bilateral temporoccipital regions and amygdalae. R judgments for studied words were associated with enhanced responses in anterior left prefrontal, left parietal, and posterior cingulate regions relative to K judgments. At study, a posterior left prefrontal region exhibited an enhanced response to words subsequently given R versus K judgments, but the response of this region during recognition did not differentiate R and K judgments. K judgments for studied words were associated with enhanced responses in right lateral and medial prefrontal cortex relative to both R judgments for studied words and N judgments for unstudied words, a difference we attribute to greater monitoring demands when memory judgments are less certain. These results suggest that the responses of different brain regions do dissociate according to the phenomenology associated with memory retrieval.

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Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Regions showing enhanced event-related responses to correct R versus correct N judgments (top panel) and correct N versus correct R judgments (bottom panel). The anatomical slices are taken through a normalized T1 structural image of one participant’s brain. The activations reflect t tests on the height of the best-fitting canonical hemodynamic response function (HRF) across participants, thresholded at p < 0.01 for the purpose of illustration. The event-related plots are the sum of the best-fitting canonical HRF and its derivative (see Materials and Methods) from the voxel in the maxima of the activations, for the nine participants who made sufficient numbers of correct R, K, and N judgments. The error bars show the SE of the mean fitted HRF height across the nine participants (not the SE of the mean difference in fitted HRF heights for R and N judgments, which forms the error term in the repeated-measures t tests).

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Regions showing enhanced event-related responses to correct K versus correct N judgments (top panel) and correct N versus correct K judgments (bottom panel). For details, see Figure 1.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

Regions showing enhanced event-related responses to correct R versus correct K judgments (top panel) and correct K versus correct R judgments (bottom panel). For details, see Figure 1.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.

Regions showing enhanced event-related responses at study to words given correct R versus correct K judgments in the subsequent recognition test. The event-related plot on the_left_ shows the fitted response at study; the plot on the_right_ shows the fitted response of the same voxel at test. For details, see Figure 1.

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