Open AccessNovel characterization of the relationship between verbal list‐learning outcomes and hippocampal subfields in healthy adults
Author(s) -
Cremona Sandrine,
Zago Laure,
Mellet Emmanuel,
Petit Laurent,
Laurent Alexandre,
Pepe Antonietta,
Tsuchida Ami,
Beguedou Naka,
Joliot Marc,
Tzourio Christophe,
Mazoyer Bernard,
Crivello Fabrice
Publication year - 2021
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.25614
Subject(s) - psychology , california verbal learning test , verbal learning , recall , mediation , mnemonic , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , associative learning , association (psychology) , associative property , verbal memory , hippocampal formation , developmental psychology , cognition , neuroscience , paleontology , mathematics , political science , pure mathematics , law , biology , psychotherapist
The relationship between hippocampal subfield volumetry and verbal list‐learning test outcomes have mostly been studied in clinical and elderly populations, and remain controversial. For the first time, we characterized a relationship between verbal list‐learning test outcomes and hippocampal subfield volumetry on two large separate datasets of 447 and 1,442 healthy young and middle‐aged adults, and explored the processes that could explain this relationship. We observed a replicable positive linear correlation between verbal list‐learning test free recall scores and CA1 volume, specific to verbal list learning as demonstrated by the hippocampal subfield volumetry independence from verbal intelligence. Learning meaningless items was also positively correlated with CA1 volume, pointing to the role of the test design rather than word meaning. Accordingly, we found that association‐based mnemonics mediated the relationship between verbal list‐learning test outcomes and CA1 volume. This mediation suggests that integrating items into associative representations during verbal list‐learning tests explains CA1 volume variations: this new explanation is consistent with the associative functions of the human CA1.