Scene processing following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Flavia De Luca,Cornelia Mccormick,Eleanor A Maguire,Elisa Ciaramelli

doi:10.1097/wnr.0000000000001281

Abstract

It has been suggested that the mental construction of scene imagery is a core process underpinning functions such as autobiographical memory, future thinking and spatial navigation. Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in humans can cause deficits in all of these cognitive domains. Moreover, it has also been reported that patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions are impaired at imagining fictitious scenes, although they seem able to describe specific scenes from autobiographical events. In general, not much is known about how ventromedial prefrontal cortex patients process scenes. Here, we deployed a recently-developed task to provide insights into this issue, which involved detecting either semantic (e.g. an elephant with butterflies for ears) or constructive (e.g. an endless staircase) violations in scene images. Identifying constructive violations typically provokes the formation of internal scene models in healthy control participants. We tested patients with bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage, brain-damaged control patients and healthy control participants. We found no evidence for statistically significant differences between the groups in detecting either type of violation. These results suggest that an intact ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not necessary for some aspects of scene processing, with implications for understanding its role in functions such as autobiographical memory and future thinking.

Highlights

It has been suggested that the mental construction of scene imagery is a core process underpinning functions such as autobiographical memory, future thinking and spatial navigation [1,2]
Little is known about the ability of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) lesions to process scenes.in this study we examined how patients with bilateral vmPFC damage performed on McCormick et al.’s [6] possible/impossible scenes task
Not much is known about scene processing in vmPFC-damaged patients and so our results provide a novel insight into this aspect of their cognition

Summary

Introduction

It has been suggested that the mental construction of scene imagery is a core process underpinning functions such as autobiographical memory, future thinking and spatial navigation [1,2]. The hippocampus in particular has been suggested to play a key role in supporting scene imagery This is because patients with hippocampal damage struggle to imagine spatially coherent scenes, even when heavily cued [4], or when the construction of scenes is assessed implicitly [5]. McCormick et al [6] recently confirmed that it is the constructive aspect of scene processing that seems to be compromised by hippocampal lesions. They used a paradigm that involved detecting either semantic (e.g. an elephant with butterflies for ears) or spatial constructive (e.g. an endless staircase) violations in naturalistic scene images.

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Discussion

Conclusion