Neurons in the human medial temporal lobe track multiple temporal contexts during episodic memory processing.

ABSTRACT: Episodic memory requires associating items with temporal context, a process for which the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is critical. This study uses recordings from 27 human subjects who were undergoing surgical intervention for intractable epilepsy. These same data were also utilized in Umbach et al. (2020). We identify 103 memory-sensitive neurons in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, whose firing rates predicted successful episodic memory encoding as subjects performed a verbal free recall task. These neurons exhibit important properties. First, as predicted from the temporal context model, they demonstrate reinstatement of firing patterns observed during encoding at the time of retrieval. The magnitude of reinstatement predicted the tendency of subjects to cluster retrieved memory ite

SUBMITTER: Yoo HB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8802214 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature