Functional neuroimaging of autobiographical memory

The introduction notes that prior fMRI studies of episodic recall and future thinking have found a consistent distributed set of brain regions.

“have revealed a consistent and distributed network of associated brain regions,”

The present study advances efforts to dissociate functions of brain regions consistently activated in episodic memory recall and episodic future thinking.

“Taken together, therefore, the present study advances efforts to dissociate the functions of the many brain regions consistently activated in studies of episodic memory recall (Maguire, 2001; Svoboda et al., 2006; Cabeza and St Jacques, 2007) and episodic future thinking (Atance and O'Neill, 2001; Addis et al., 2007; Szpunar et al., 2007)”

Prior laboratory-based EM studies controlled only for memory retrieval but not for memory encoding.

“However, these studies controlled only for memory retrieval but not for memory encoding [4].”

During the presentation of the target photograph compared with the lure photograph, reliving was associated with a number of regions typically recruited during autobiographical memory retrieval.

“During the presentation of the target photograph compared with the lure photograph, reliving was associated with a number of regions typically recruited during autobiographical memory retrieval (43), including anterior and posterior hippocampus, left ventrolateral PFC, rostral medial and vmPFC, posterior cingulate, posterior inferior parietal cortex, and lateral temporal cortex (Fig. S3).”

Neural regions associated with recollection and memory-updating processes are typically recruited more during autobiographical memory compared with laboratory-based memory retrieval.

“Neural regions associated with recollection and memory-updating processes are typically recruited more during autobiographical memory compared with laboratory-based memory retrieval (43, 61, 62),”