ABSTRACT

The role of the hippocampus during memory consolidation is not fully understood, with human and animal experiments producing conflicting conclusions. In particular, human lesion studies tend to indicate that the hippocampus gradually becomes independent from memory over years, whilst animal studies suggest that this can happen over days. Tallman et al. (this issue) used fMRI to investigate activity and functional connectivity in the brain at four different time points following memory encoding. Their findings include a decrease in functional connectivity between the hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex with memory age, which supports the system consolidation theory, but also argues against the reduced involvement of the hippocampus over time. This study sheds new light on the neurobiology of memory.

摘要

海马体在记忆巩固过程中的作用尚不完全清楚，人类和动物实验得出了相互矛盾的结论。特别是，人类损伤研究往往表明，海马体会随着时间的推移逐渐变得独立于记忆，而动物研究表明，这种情况可能会在几天内发生。塔尔曼等人。（本期）使用功能磁共振成像来研究记忆编码后四个不同时间点的大脑活动和功能连接。他们的发现包括海马体和海马旁皮层之间的功能连接随着记忆年龄的增长而减少，这支持了系统巩固理论，但也反对海马体的参与随着时间的推移而减少。这项研究为记忆的神经生物学提供了新的线索。