Activation of right parietal cortex during memory retrieval of nonlinguistic auditory stimuli

Abstract

In neuroimaging studies, the left ventral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is particularly active during memory retrieval. However, most studies have used verbal or verbalizable stimuli. We investigated neural activations associated with the retrieval of short, agrammatical music stimuli (Blackwood, 2004), which have been largely associated with right hemisphere processing. At study, participants listened to music stimuli and rated them on pleasantness. At test, participants made old/new recognition judgments with high/low confidence ratings. Right, but not left, ventral PPC activity was observed during the retrieval of these music stimuli. Thus, rather than indicating a special status of left PPC in retrieval, both right and left ventral PPC participate in memory retrieval, depending on the type of information that is to be remembered.

Episodic retrieval and the cortical binding of relational activity

“…A corollary of this principle is that episodic features that are encoded primarily by one cerebral hemisphere should be linked by vPPC bindings in that same hemisphere. This prediction is supported by the findings of Klostermann et al (2009), in which retrieval-related activity in the right vPPC was found for stimuli (unfamiliar music clips) known to be processed in the right hemisphere. On this view, the frequently observed finding of left-lateralized vPPC activity (for words, pictures, and faces) is attributed to vPPC bindings of verbal or semantically based features known to be represented primarily in the left hemisphere.…”

“…The successful retrieval effect has been observed using a variety of stimuli types, such as visual and spoken words, pictures, faces, natural sounds, and music clips (Cansino, Maquet, Dolan, & Rugg, 2002;Dobbins & Wagner, 2005;Guerin & Miller, 2009;Henson, Rugg, Shallice, Josephs, & Dolan, 1999;Klostermann, Kane & Shimamura 2008;Klostermann, Loui, & Shimamura, 2009;Leube, Erb, Grodd, Bartels, & Kircher, 2003;Shannon & Buckner, 2004;Svoboda, McKinnon, & Levine, 2006). It has also been observed under various test conditions and manipulations, such as recognition memory, cued recall, source memory, confidence judgments, and motor responses (see de Zubicaray et al, 2007;Shannon & Buckner, 2004;Vilberg & Rugg 2008;Wagner et al, 2005).…”

“…If, however, PPC activity monitors the retrieval of event features, it seems reasonable that right-lateralized PPC activity would be observed for items or features encoded by the right hemisphere. To date, there is only one study in which right-lateralized successful retrieval effects have been observed (Klostermann et al, 2009). In that study, nonWestern, nonverbal music clips were used as stimuli.…”

Hierarchical relational binding in the medial temporal lobe: The strong get stronger

“…One critical finding is that vPPC activity is tied to brain regions that encode event features. For example, Klostermann et al (2009) found only right vPPC activity during retrieval of non-Western music that is processed primarily by the right hemisphere. In other studies, left-lateralized vPPC activity is observed, which suggests that verbal or semantic processes are typically implemented during retrieval.…”

Lateral posterior parietal activity during reality monitoring discriminations of memories of high and low perceptual vividness

“…For instance, successful retrieval effects occur when the encoded stimuli are words (Donaldson, Petersen, & Buckner, 2001;Henson, Hornberger, & Rugg, 2005;Herron, Henson, & Rugg, 2004;Kahn et al, 2004), faces (Guerin & Miller, 2009;Leube, Erb, Grodd, Bartels, & Kircher, 2003), pictures (Cansino, Maquet, Dolan, & Rugg, 2002;Dobbins & Wagner, 2005;Shannon & Buckner, 2004;Slotnick, Moo, Segal, & Hart Jr., 2003;Weis, Klaver, Reul, Elger, & Fernández, 2004), natural sounds (Shannon & Buckner, 2004), and non-verbal musical stimuli (Klostermann, Loui, & Shimamura, 2009). Effects also occur across different response contingencies -when subjects are instructed to respond to both old and new items, old items only, or new items only (Shannon & Buckner, 2004) suggesting that activation is not likely due to the planning or implementation of a motor response.…”