A Medial Temporal Lobe Division of Labor: Insights From Memory in Aging and Early Alzheimer Disease

Dual process theories of recognition memory posit that recollection and familiarity represent dissociable processes. Animal studies and human functional imaging experiments support an anatomic dissociation of these processes in the medial temporal lobes (MTL). By this hypothesis, recollection may be dependent on the hippocampus, while familiarity appears to rely on extrahippocampal MTL (ehMTL) structures, particularly perirhinal and lateral entorhinal cortices. Despite these findings, the dual process model and these anatomic mappings remain controversial, in part because the study of patients with lesions to the MTL has been limited and has revealed predominantly single dissociations. We examined measures of recollection and familiarity in three groups (normal older adults, amnesic-mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease) in which these memory measures and the relative integrity of MTL structures are variable, thus enhancing our power to detect MTL-memory relationships. Recollection and familiarity and volumes of hippocampus and ehMTL, defined as a region including entorhinal/perirhinal cortices and parahippocampus, were measured. Regression analyses revealed a stronger relationship of recollection with the hippocampus compared to ehMTL, while familiarity was more highly related to ehMTL compared to hippocampus. These results are consistent with a division of labor in the MTL and the dual process model. (C) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.