Ulrich Martin, Jonas Christina, Grön Georg
Department of Psychiatry, Section for Neuropsychology and Functional Imaging at Ulm University, Leimgrubenweg, Ulm, Germany.
Neuroreport. 2010 Jan 6;21(1):59-63. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e3283340d36.
The hippocampus is well known to contribute to episodic memory encoding. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the hippocampal response to exponentially varying encoding demands while forming associations between faces and names. We found that only the left hippocampus exhibited a stepped modulation of neuronal activity, which was furthermore correlated with individual memory performance. The right hippocampus, in contrast, showed a constant strong engagement throughout all difficulty levels. We hypothesize that the left hippocampus functionally compensated an overload of right hippocampal resources in an attempt to prevent memory decline. This explanation could help reconcile controversies in the debate of material-specific (i.e. verbal vs. nonverbal) lateralization of hippocampal activation.
众所周知，海马体有助于情景记忆编码。在此，我们使用功能磁共振成像来研究在形成面孔与名字之间的关联时，海马体对呈指数变化的编码需求的反应。我们发现，只有左侧海马体表现出神经元活动的阶梯式调节，而且这还与个体的记忆表现相关。相比之下，右侧海马体在所有难度水平下均表现出持续的强烈参与。我们推测，左侧海马体在功能上补偿了右侧海马体资源的过载，以试图防止记忆衰退。这一解释有助于调和关于海马体激活的材料特异性（即言语与非言语）侧化争论中的争议。
