Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Aug 1;35(8):bhaf211.
doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaf211.

Cortico-hippocampal interactions underlie schema-supported memory encoding in older adults

Shenyang Huang  1 , Paul C Bogdan  1 , Cortney M Howard  1 , Kirsten Gillette  1 , Lifu Deng  2 , Erin Welch  3 , Margaret L McAllister  4 , Kelly S Giovanello  5 , Simon W Davis  1   6 , Roberto Cabeza  1
Affiliations

Cortico-hippocampal interactions underlie schema-supported memory encoding in older adults

Shenyang Huang et al. Cereb Cortex. .

Abstract

Although episodic memory is typically impaired in older adults (OAs) compared to young adults (YAs), this deficit is attenuated when OAs can leverage their rich semantic knowledge, such as their knowledge of schemas. Memory is better for items consistent with pre-existing schemas and this effect is larger in OAs. Neuroimaging studies have associated schema use with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), angular gyrus (AG), and hippocampus (HPC), but most of this research has been limited to YAs. This fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying how schemas boost episodic memory in OAs. Participants encoded scene-object pairs with varying congruency, and memory for the objects was tested the following day. Congruency with schemas enhanced object memory for YAs and, more substantially, for OAs. fMRI analyses examined cortico-hippocampal interactions at encoding. We found that a vmPFC-HPC interaction was related to enhanced subsequent memory for congruent objects in both age groups, whereas an AG-HPC interaction contributed to subsequent memory for congruent objects only in OAs. Individual difference analyses of the AG-HPC interaction suggested that OAs made use of semantic knowledge to facilitate encoding. Collectively, our findings illustrate age-related differences in how schemas influence episodic memory encoding via distinct cortico-hippocampal interactions.

Keywords: aging; angular gyrus; episodic memory; hippocampus; schema.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

All authors confirm that there is no conflict of interest.

Update of

References

    1. Addis DR, Leclerc CM, Muscatell KA, Kensinger EA. 2010. There are age-related changes in neural connectivity during the encoding of positive, but not negative, information. Cortex. 46:425–433. 10.1016/j.cortex.2009.04.011. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Amer T, Giovanello KS, Nichol DR, Hasher L, Grady CL. 2019. Neural correlates of enhanced memory for meaningful associations with age. Cereb Cortex. 29:4568–4579. 10.1093/cercor/bhy334. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anderson RC. 1984. Role of the Reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory. In: Anderson RC, Osborn J, Tierney RJ, editors. Learn Read Am Sch. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp 243–257.
    1. Arbuckle TY, Cooney R, Milne J, Melchior A. 1994. Memory for spatial layouts in relation to age and schema typicality. Psychol Aging. 9:467–480. 10.1037/0882-7974.9.3.467. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Atir-Sharon T, Gilboa A, Hazan H, Koilis E, Manevitz LM. 2015. Decoding the formation of new semantics: MVPA investigation of rapid neocortical plasticity during associative encoding through fast mapping. Neural Plast. 2015:804385–804317. 10.1155/2015/804385. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources