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Neural correlates of temporal context retrieval

Temporal context memory is memory for the timing of events. People can make temporal judgments based on strategies such as assessing the relative familiarity of events or inferring temporal order from the semantic associations among events. The purpose of present study is to investigate the brain regions that support temporal context retrieval in the absence of such non-temporal strategies (i.e. pure temporal context memory). We used three word familiar phrases (triplets) as stimuli. In study phase, three words were presented quickly one after another in either familiar or scrambled order. Participants were instructed to read aloud each word and try to remember the order of the words. Then they were tested on their memory for the order of the words in each triplet. We propose that memory for the scrambled triplets reflects primarily temporal retrieval for two reasons. First, participants were prevented from using semantic strategies during encoding. Second, the relative familiarity of the words in each triplet was similar and not diagnostic of the order of the words during encoding. Neuroimaging results indicate that temporal context retrieval, memory for the order of words in scrambled triplets, was associated with the hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, retrosplenial cortex, and posterior cingulate, which are consistent with the retrieval of non-temporal context in episodic memory. The results also suggest that temporal context retrieval could rely on familiarity, which was demonstrated by the higher accuracy and greater activation of PRc in familiar phrases and scrambled triplets presented in studied order in the test phase. / Master of Science

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/78100
Date19 May 2014
CreatorsWang, Fang
ContributorsPsychology, Diana, Rachel A., Bell, Martha Ann, Cate, Anthony
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Text
Formatapplication/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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