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Abstract:
Abstract: Previous neuroimaging research has implicated the
hippocampus and the posterior parahippocampal gyrus in encoding
novel visual scenes. In the present PET study, we investigated
whether these structures are also involved in recognition of
previously encountered scenes. Twelve healthy participants were
scanned while encoding photographs of novel scenes and while
performing three different forced-choice recognition memory tests.
These tests required the discrimination of familiar from altered
scenes, which differed from each other either in the identity of
one of the objects, the spatial configuration the objects formed,
or specific object-place associations within identical
configurations. Participants were also scanned in two visual
baseline tasks and during encoding of individual objects presented
without a scene context. Encoding of novel scenes, as compared to
baseline, activated anterior portions of the hippocampus and
posterior aspects of the parahippocampal gyrus bilaterally. A
comparison of scene encoding with encoding of individual objects
showed that the parahippocampal activation extended into a
right-sided region previously described as parahippocampal place
area (PPA).
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