Contextual memory in a virtual world

Abstract

Decades of human and animal research suggest that the medial temporal lobes (MTL) play an important role in memory. We know from work in human amnesia that MTL structures are crucial in forming memories of everyday events. We also know from animal work that MTL structures are critical to forming spatial memories of an organism's physical environment. Paradoxically, however, only a small proportion of functional imaging studies have shown MTL activation during memory performance for healthy humans. This has led researchers to speculate that conventional memory tasks fail to capture the complexities of memory as it operates in real-world contexts, and thus fail to activate MTL structures that are uniquely critical to real-world memory function.Burgess et al. overcome this limitation by examining memory processing in a virtual reality (VR) environment using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI) 1xA temporoparietal and prefrontal network for retrieving the spatial context of lifelike events. Burgess, N. et al. NeuroImage. 2001; 14: 439–453Crossref | PubMed | Scopus (312)See all