Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 19, Issue 5, Pages 1198-1207Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhn165
Keywords
episodic memory; fMRI; hippocampus; prefrontal cortex; semantic memory
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Funding
- National Institute of Mental Health [MH-074692]
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Behavioral research consistently shows that congruous events, that is, events whose constituent elements match along some specific dimension, are better remembered than incongruous events. Although it has been speculated that this congruency subsequent memory effect (cSME) results from enhanced semantic elaboration, empirical evidence for this account is lacking. Here, we report a set of behavioral and neuroimaging experiments demonstrating that congruous events engage regions along the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG)-025EFconsistently related to semantic elaboration-025EFto a significantly greater degree than incongruous events, providing evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Critically, we additionally report 3 novel findings in relation to event congruency: First, congruous events yield superior memory not only for a given study item but also for associated source details. Second, the cSME is evident not only for events that matched a semantic context but also for those that matched a subjective aesthetic schema. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging brain/behavior correlation analysis reveals a strong link between 1) across-subject variation in the magnitude of the cSME and 2) differential right hippocampal activation, suggesting that episodic memory for congruous events is effectively bolstered by the extent to which semantic associations are generated and relationally integrated via LIFG-hippocampal-encoding mechanisms.
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