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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on November 6, 2006
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl111
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© 2006 The Authors This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article

Fragments of a Larger Whole: Retrieval Cues Constrain Observed Neural Correlates of Memory Encoding

Leun J. Otten 1 *

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London (UCL), 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Leun J. Otten, E-mail: l.otten{at}ucl.ac.uk


  Abstract

Laying down a new memory involves activity in a number of brain regions. Here, it is shown that the particular regions associated with successful encoding depend on the way in which memory is probed. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging signals were acquired while subjects performed an incidental encoding task on a series of visually presented words denoting objects. A recognition memory test using the Remember/Know procedure to separate responses based on recollection and familiarity followed 1 day later. Critically, half of the studied objects were cued with a corresponding spoken word, and half with a corresponding picture. Regardless of cue, activity in prefrontal and hippocampal regions predicted subsequent recollection of a word. Type of retrieval cue modulated activity in prefrontal, temporal, and parietal cortices. Words subsequently recognized on the basis of a sense of familiarity were at study also associated with differential activity in a number of brain regions, some of which were probe dependent. Thus, observed neural correlates of successful encoding are constrained by type of retrieval cue, and are only fragments of all encoding-related neural activity. Regions exhibiting cue-specific effects may be sites that support memory through the degree of overlap between the processes engaged during encoding and those engaged during retrieval.

Keywords: encoding; episodic memory; fMRI; recognition; retrieval; transfer-appropriate processing.
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