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. 2000 Sep 26;97(20):11120-4.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.97.20.11120.

Reactivation of encoding-related brain activity during memory retrieval

L Nyberg  1 , R Habib, A R McIntosh, E Tulving
Affiliations

Reactivation of encoding-related brain activity during memory retrieval

L Nyberg et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Neuronal models predict that retrieval of specific event information reactivates brain regions that were active during encoding of this information. Consistent with this prediction, this positron-emission tomography study showed that remembering that visual words had been paired with sounds at encoding activated some of the auditory brain regions that were engaged during encoding. After word-sound encoding, activation of auditory brain regions was also observed during visual word recognition when there was no demand to retrieve auditory information. Collectively, these observations suggest that information about the auditory components of multisensory event information is stored in auditory responsive cortex and reactivated at retrieval, in keeping with classical ideas about "redintegration, " that is, the power of part of an encoded stimulus complex to evoke the whole experience.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overlapping activations in auditory responsive cortex during encoding and retrieval of auditory information in experiment 1. Sagittal, coronal, and transverse views of a glass brains are shown. (Top) Differential activation when encoding of visual words and sounds was contrasted with encoding of visual words. (Bottom) Differential activation when paired and unpaired retrieval were compared (the encoding activation map served as a mask for the retrieval comparison). Extent threshold = 25 voxels.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overlapping activations in auditory responsive cortex during encoding and retrieval of auditory information in experiment 2. Sagittal, coronal, and transverse views of glass brains are shown. (Top) Differential activation when encoding of visual words and sounds was contrasted with encoding of visual words. (Bottom) Differential activation when paired and unpaired retrieval were compared (the encodingactivation map in A served as a mask for the retrieval comparison). Extent threshold = 25 voxels.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean activity in auditory responsive cortex during visual word recognition. (Top) Differential activation when recognition of words with strong sound associations was contrasted with recognition of words with no sound associations (the image from word-sound encoding—word encoding served as mask). (Bottom) Mean activity in right (x, y, z = 60, −32, 16) and left (x, y, z = −50, −12, −4) auditory responsive cortex as function of experimental condition. None, no word-sound association; Weak, weak word-sound association; Strong, strong word-sound association. y axis, blood flow counts.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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