Neural correlates of availability and accessibility in memory

Failure to remember can be due to not having information available in memory or to an inability to access information that is available. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain responses during encoding and successive cued recall and associative recognition tests of paired associates. Items were classified into 3 categories based on performance on the 2 retrieval tests: 1) successfully remembered (both recalled and recognized), 2) inaccessible (not recalled but later recognized), and 3) forgotten (neither recalled nor recognized). During cued recall, availability in memory was signaled in a network of regions including bilateral medial temporal lobe, left middle temporal cortex, and the parietal cortex. Memory access resulted in heightened activity in these regions as well as in left inferior frontal cortex. Encoding-related activity in hippocampus and inferior temporal cortex predicted subsequent availability and left inferior frontal activity predicted subsequent access. These results suggest that failure to access information that is available in memory may reflect weaker memory representations.