Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, The Netherlands.
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, The Netherlands.
Behav Brain Res. 2013 Jan 1;236(1):67-77. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2012.08.001. Epub 2012 Aug 19.
Memory for perceptual events includes the neural representation of the sensory information at short or longer time scales. Recent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies of human visual cortex provided evidence that sensory cortex contributes to memory functions. In this review, we provide an exhaustive overview of these studies and ascertain how well the available evidence supports the idea of a causal role of sensory cortex in memory retention and retrieval. We discuss the validity and implications of the studies using a number of methodological and theoretical criteria that are relevant for brain stimulation of visual cortex. While most studies applied TMS to visual cortex to interfere with memory functions, a handful of pioneering studies used TMS to 'reactivate' memories in visual cortex. Interestingly, similar effects of TMS on memory were found in different memory tasks, which suggests that different memory systems share a neural mechanism of memory in visual cortex. At the same time, this neural mechanism likely interacts with higher order brain areas. Based on this overview and evaluation, we provide a first attempt to an integrative framework that describes how sensory processes contribute to memory in visual cortex, and how higher order areas contribute to this mechanism.
记忆感知事件包括在短时间或较长时间尺度上对感觉信息的神经表示。最近对人类视觉皮层的经颅磁刺激 (TMS) 研究提供了证据，表明感觉皮层有助于记忆功能。在这篇综述中，我们全面概述了这些研究，并确定现有证据在多大程度上支持感觉皮层在记忆保留和检索中起因果作用的观点。我们使用与视觉皮层脑刺激相关的一些方法学和理论标准来讨论研究的有效性和意义。虽然大多数研究应用 TMS 来干扰视觉皮层的记忆功能，但少数开创性研究使用 TMS 来“重新激活”视觉皮层中的记忆。有趣的是，在不同的记忆任务中发现了 TMS 对记忆的类似影响，这表明不同的记忆系统在视觉皮层中共享记忆的神经机制。同时，这种神经机制可能与更高阶的大脑区域相互作用。基于此综述和评估，我们提供了一个综合框架的初步尝试，该框架描述了感觉过程如何有助于视觉皮层中的记忆，以及更高阶区域如何有助于这种机制。
