Department of Psychiatry, Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Hippocampus. 2019 Feb;29(2):63-67. doi: 10.1002/hipo.22998. Epub 2018 Nov 19.
Classical views of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) have established that it plays a crucial role in long-term memory (LTM). Here we demonstrate, in a sample of patients who have undergone anterior temporal lobectomy for the treatment of pharmacoresistant epilepsy, that the MTL additionally plays a specific, causal role in short-term memory (STM). Patients (n=22) and age-matched healthy control participants (n=26) performed a STM task with a sensitive continuous report measure. This paradigm allowed us to examine recall memory for object identity, location and object-location binding, independently on a trial-by-trial basis. Our findings point to a specific involvement of MTL in object-location binding, but, crucially, not retention of either object identity or location. Therefore the MTL appears to perform a specific computation: binding disparate features that belong to a memory. These results echo findings from previous studies, which have identified a role for the MTL in relational binding for LTM, and support the proposal that MTL regions perform such a function for both STM and LTM, independent of the retention duration. Furthermore, these findings and the methodology employed here may provide a simple, sensitive and clinically valuable means to test memory dysfunuction in MTL disorders.
经典的内侧颞叶（MTL）观点认为，它在长期记忆（LTM）中起着至关重要的作用。在这里，我们在接受颞叶前部切除术治疗耐药性癫痫的患者样本中证明，MTL 还在短期记忆（STM）中发挥特定的因果作用。患者（n=22）和年龄匹配的健康对照组参与者（n=26）进行了 STM 任务，采用敏感的连续报告测量。这个范式允许我们在逐次试验的基础上独立检查物体身份、位置和物体-位置结合的回忆记忆。我们的发现表明 MTL 特别参与了物体-位置结合，但关键是，它不保留物体身份或位置。因此，MTL 似乎执行了一个特定的计算：绑定属于记忆的不同特征。这些结果与先前研究的结果相呼应，这些研究确定了 MTL 在 LTM 的关系绑定中的作用，并支持这样的假设，即 MTL 区域独立于保留时间，为 STM 和 LTM 执行这样的功能。此外，这些发现和这里采用的方法可能为测试 MTL 障碍中的记忆功能障碍提供一种简单、敏感和具有临床价值的手段。
