Cortical Representations of Personally Familiar Objects and Places: Functional Organization of the Human Posterior Cingulate Cortex

Abstract

The recognition of both personally familiar objects and places involves nonspatial memory retrieval processes, but only personally familiar places are represented as space. Although the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) is considered to process both types of such memories, its functional organization is poorly understood. In this event-related fMRI study, normal subjects judged familiar/unfamiliar pictures in four categories: familiar places (FP), familiar objects (FO), unfamiliar places (UP), and unfamiliar objects (UO), thus constituting a two-factorial design. A significant main effect of stimuli with greater activation in the place (FP and UP) than object (FO and UO) trials was observed bilaterally in several medial temporo-occipito-parietal regions, including the caudal PCC (cPCC) and parahippocampal gyrus. The reverse comparison revealed greater activation in the lateral inferior occipito-temporal junctions and intraparietal sulci bilaterally. A significant main effect of familiarity with greater activation in the familiar (FP and FO) than unfamiliar (UP and UO) trials was observed in the mid-dorsal PCC (mPCC), retrosplenial cortex, posterior precuneus, and the left intraparietal sulcus. Activation specific to the FP trials (as assessed by the interaction) was observed in the right posterodorsal PCC (pPCC) only. Together with data from previous functional imaging studies, the results suggest a functional segregation of human PCC with differential involvement of pPCC in spatial representations of personally familiar places and of the mPCC and retrosplenial cortex in episodic retrieval of personally familiar places and objects. Activation of the left intraparietal sulcus may reflect retrieval of memories related to object manipulation.

The construction system of the brain

“…A distributed brain network was implicated involving the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, RSC, posterior parietal cortices, middle temporal cortices and ventromedial PFC (figure 4). This construction network cannot only account for a large part of the episodic memory recall network (figure 1) and EFT Szpunar et al 2007;Botzung et al 2008), but also bears a striking resemblance to networks activated by navigation (Maguire 2001b;Burgess et al 2002), spatial Kumaran & Maguire 2005) and place tasks (Epstein & Kanwisher 1998;Sugiura et al 2005), as well as those associated with mind wandering (Mason et al 2007) and the default network (Raichle et al 2001;Buckner et al 2008). This suggests there may be a set of key component processes underlying all of these cognitive functions (Buckner & Carroll 2007;Spreng et al in press).…”

“…Recalling previously seen or previously imagined objects, or imagining objects for the first time in the scanner resulted in activation of brain areas associated with supporting object representations and manipulations, namely lateral occipital complex and intraparietal sulcus (e.g. Sugiura et al 2005; figure 5). Moreover, there was no overlap between this simple object network (Sugiura et al 2005) and that of complex scene construction (Hassabis et al 2007a), suggesting that they represent dissociable cognitive processes with distinct neural bases.…”

“…Sugiura et al 2005; figure 5). Moreover, there was no overlap between this simple object network (Sugiura et al 2005) and that of complex scene construction (Hassabis et al 2007a), suggesting that they represent dissociable cognitive processes with distinct neural bases. Nevertheless, complex scenes and experiences are clearly constructed out of simpler elements.…”

Task-dependent posterior cingulate activation in mild cognitive impairment

“…Furthermore, the PCC activation is also elicited during recognition of visual and auditory materials drawn from a person's daily life. When individuals are presented with names of friends and family (Maddock, Garrett, & Buonocore, 2001), faces and voices of friends and family (Shah et al, 2001), famous faces (Leveroni et al, 2000), personal belongings (Leveroni et al, 2000;Sugiura, Shah, Zilles, & Fink, 2005), familiar places (Sugiura et al, 2005), and personal life events (Addis, Moscovitch, Crawley, & McAndrews, 2004;Levine et al, 2004), PCC activation is more pronounced than when viewing similarly constructed, but novel materials.…”

Bewusstsein und Gedächtnis: Die Bedeutung der Kohärenz und Konsistenz von Erinnerungen

“…Bowers et al 1988;Gainotti et al 1998;Heilman et al 1990). Funktionelle Bildgebungsstudien stimmen gut mit diesen Befunden überein, indem sie eine zentrale Funktion des retrosplenialen Kortexes für das emotionale episodische (autobiographische und experimentelle) Gedächtnis belegen (Fink et al 1996;Shah et al 2001;Piefke et al 2003;Sugiura et al 2005). Die spezifische Rolle dieser Gehirnstruktur bei der Verarbeitung episodischer Information legt einen wichtigen retrosplenialen Beitrag an der Entstehung des autonoetischen Bewusstseins nahe.…”