
Material specific lateralization of medial temporal lobe function: An f MRI investigation
Author(s) -
Dalton Marshall A.,
Hornberger Michael,
Piguet Olivier
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.23077
Subject(s) - psychology , mnemonic , lateralization of brain function , functional magnetic resonance imaging , semantic memory , temporal lobe , nonverbal communication , cognitive psychology , verbal memory , recognition memory , neuroscience , cognition , communication , epilepsy
The theory of material specific lateralization of memory function posits that left and right MTL regions are asymmetrically involved in mnemonic processing of verbal and nonverbal material respectively. Lesion and functional imaging (fMRI) studies provide robust evidence for a left MTL asymmetry in the verbal memory domain. Evidence for a right MTL/nonverbal asymmetry is not as robust. A handful of fMRI studies have investigated this issue but have generally utilised nonverbal stimuli which are amenable to semantic elaboration. This fMRI study aimed to investigate the neural correlates of recognition memory processing in 20 healthy young adults (mean age = 26 years) for verbal stimuli and nonverbal stimuli that were specifically designed to minimize verbalisation. Analyses revealed that the neural correlates of recognition memory processing for verbal and nonverbal stimuli were differentiable and asymmetrically recruited the left and right MTL respectively. The right perirhinal cortex and hippocampus were preferentially involved in successful recognition memory of items devoid of semantic information. In contrast, the left anterior hippocampus was preferentially involved in successful recognition memory of stimuli which contained semantic meaning. These results suggest that the left MTL is preferentially involved in mnemonic processing of verbal/semantic information. In contrast, the right MTL is preferentially involved in visual/non‐semantic mnemonic processing. We propose that during development, the left MTL becomes specialised for verbal mnemonic processing due to its proximity with left lateralised cortical language processing areas while visual/non‐semantic mnemonic processing gets ‘crowded out’ to become predominantly, but not completely, the domain of the right MTL. Hum Brain Mapp 37:933–941, 2016 . © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .