Long-term coding of personal and universal associations underlying the memory web in the human brain

Emanuela De Falco, Matias J. Ison, Itzhak Fried and Rodrigo Quian Quiroga ()
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Emanuela De Falco: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester
Matias J. Ison: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester
Itzhak Fried: David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Neurons in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a critical area for declarative memory, have been shown to change their tuning in associative learning tasks. Yet, it is unclear how durable these neuronal representations are and if they outlast the execution of the task. To address this issue, we studied the responses of MTL neurons in neurosurgical patients to known concepts (people and places). Using association scores provided by the patients and a web-based metric, here we show that whenever MTL neurons respond to more than one concept, these concepts are typically related. Furthermore, the degree of association between concepts could be successfully predicted based on the neurons’ response patterns. These results provide evidence for a long-term involvement of MTL neurons in the representation of durable associations, a hallmark of human declarative memory.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13408

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