Are there multiple kinds of episodic memory? An fMRI investigation comparing autobiographical and recognition memory tasks

Hung Yu Chen, Adrian W. Gilmore, Steven M. Nelson, Kathleen B. McDermott

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Scopus citations

Abstract

What brain regions underlie retrieval from episodic memory? The bulk of research addressing this question with fMRI has relied upon recognition memory for materials encoded within the laboratory. Another, less dominant tradition has used autobiographical methods, whereby people recall events from their lifetime, often after being cued with words or pictures. The current study addresses how the neural substrates of successful memory retrieval differed as a function of the targeted memory when the experimental parameters were held constant in the two conditions (except for instructions). Human participants studied a set of scenes and then took two types of memory test while undergoing fMRI scanning. In one condition (the picture memory test), participants reported for each scene (32 studied, 64 nonstudied) whether it was recollected from the prior study episode. In a second condition (the life memory test), participants reported for each scene (32 studied, 64 nonstudied) whether it reminded them of a specific event from their preexperimental lifetime. An examination of successful retrieval (yes responses) for recently studied scenes for the two test types revealed pronounced differences; that is, autobiographical retrieval instantiated with the life memory test preferentially activated the default mode network, whereas hits in the picture memory test preferentially engaged the parietal memory network as well as portions of the frontoparietal control network. When experimental cueing parameters are held constant, the neural underpinnings of successful memory retrieval differ when remembering life events and recently learned events.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)2764-2775
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Neuroscience
Volume37
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 8 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University and Dart NeuroScience, LLC, and by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1143954 to A.W.G.). This work benefitted from discussions with Ian Dobbins and Jeff Zacks, from network parcellation underlays provided by Jonathan Power, from assistance with data collection by Fan Zou (Experiment 1) and Ruthie Shaffer and Hannah Becker (Experiment 2), and from response scoring by Jiayi Zhou (Experiment 1). The authors declare no competing financial interests

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 the authors.

Keywords

  • Autobiographical memory
  • Default mode network
  • Episodic memory
  • FMRI
  • Parietal memory network
  • Recognition memory

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