Prefrontal and Medial Temporal Lobe Cortical Contributions to Visual Short-Term Memory

Abstract

A number of recent studies have indicated that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) plays a critical role in working memory (WM) and perception, but these results have been highly controversial given the traditional association of MTL with long-term memory. We review the research and highlight important factors that need to be considered in determining the role of MTL in WM including set-size of used stimuli and feature complexity and/or feature conjunctions/bindings embedded in those stimuli. These factors relate to hierarchical and, accordingly, domain-specific theories of functional organization within the temporal lobe. In addition, one must consider process-specific theories too, because two key processes commonly understood to contribute recognition memory, namely, recollection and familiarity, also have robust support from neurophysiological and neuroimaging research as to their functional dissociations within MTL. pFC has long been heavily implicated in WM; however, relatively less is known about how the pFC contributes to recollection and familiarity, although dynamic prefrontal coding models in WM may help to explain their neural mechanisms. The MTL and pFC are heavily interconnected and do not operate independently in underlying WM. We propose that investigation of the interactions between these two regions in WM, particularly their coordinated neural activities, and the modeling of such interactions, will be crucial for the advancing understanding of the neural mechanisms of WM.

Acute stress impairs intentional memory suppression through aberrant prefrontal cortex activation in high trait ruminators

“…Moreover, task-modulated functional connectivity between the left MFG and left STG was negative in the LTR and positive in HTR. The activation of the STG, an important neural structure participating in memory-related processes ( Taing et al, 2021 ; Wu & Buckley, 2022 ), has been found to be downregulated by the DLPFC during memory suppression ( Benoit et al, 2016 ; Hermans et al, 2014 ). However, acute stress reduces activation in the DLPFC, further increasing activation in the STG and impairing memory suppression performance ( Quaedflieg et al, 2015 ).…”

The effect of memory load on object reconstruction: Insights from an online mouse-tracking task

“…Converging findings reveal that the format of the object representation can likely include multiple forms of binding, such that features may be initially bound to shared spatial maps but are then bound to form object representations that no longer depend on space (Shepherdson, Hell, & Oberauer, 2022). This view has support from neuroimaging research, whereby early posterior neocortex may represent features bound to location (Henderson, Rademaker, & Serences, 2022;Hubel & Wiesel, 1962;Li et al, 2014;Schneegans & Bays, 2017;Sprague & Serences, 2013;Thyer et al, 2022), with fully-specified objects bound to spatial context represented in anterior regions like the medial temporal lobes (Cooper & Ritchey, 2019;Cowell, Barense, & Sadil, 2019;Liang et al, 2020;Martin et al, 2018;Wu & Buckley, 2022;Yeung et al, 2013;2019;Yonelinas et al, 2019). Critically, this body of work suggests a division between feature-to-location binding that may depend on posterior regions of the neocortex with object-to-location binding that may depend on anterior regions such as the medial temporal lobes.…”

Identification of region-specific gene isoforms in the human brain using long-read transcriptome sequencing

“…Here, we performed long-read sequencing of RNA extracted from three regions of the postmortem human brain—the temporal cortex, hypothalamus, and cerebellum (cerebellar cortex)—with a focus on characteristics of region-specific transcriptomes. The temporal cortex is involved in language, memory, and hearing ( 20 – 22 ) and has been reported to be associated with schizophrenia ( 23 ),Alzheimer’s disease ( 24 ), and temporal lobe epilepsy ( 25 ). The hypothalamus is a critical brain region that regulates endocrine and autonomic functions ( 26 , 27 ).…”