Liu Zhong-Xu, Rosenbaum R Shayna, Ryan Jennifer D
Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, Michigan 48128, USA.
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto, ON M6A 2E1, Canada.
Cereb Cortex Commun. 2020;1(1):tgaa054. doi: 10.1093/texcom/tgaa054. Epub 2020 Aug 25.
We move our eyes to explore the visual world, extract information, and create memories. The number of gaze fixations-the stops that the eyes make-has been shown to correlate with activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory, and with later recognition memory. Here, we combined eyetracking with fMRI to provide direct evidence for the relationships between gaze fixations, neural activity, and memory during scene viewing. Compared to free viewing, fixating a single location reduced: 1) subsequent memory, 2) neural activity along the ventral visual stream into the hippocampus, 3) neural similarity between effects of subsequent memory and visual exploration, and 4) functional connectivity among the hippocampus, parahippocampal place area, and other cortical regions. Gaze fixations were uniquely related to hippocampal activity, even after controlling for neural effects due to subsequent memory. Therefore, this study provides key causal evidence supporting the notion that the oculomotor and memory systems are intrinsically related at both the behavioral and neural level. Individual gaze fixations may provide the basic unit of information on which memory binding processes operate.
我们移动眼睛来探索视觉世界、提取信息并创建记忆。注视次数（即眼睛的停顿次数）已被证明与海马体（对记忆至关重要的一个区域）的活动以及随后的识别记忆相关。在这里，我们将眼动追踪与功能磁共振成像相结合，以提供场景观看过程中注视、神经活动和记忆之间关系的直接证据。与自由观看相比，注视单个位置会降低：1）后续记忆；2）沿着腹侧视觉通路进入海马体的神经活动；3）后续记忆效应与视觉探索之间的神经相似性；4）海马体、海马旁回位置区和其他皮质区域之间的功能连接。即使在控制了后续记忆引起的神经效应之后，注视仍与海马体活动存在独特的关联。因此，本研究提供了关键的因果证据，支持了动眼系统和记忆系统在行为和神经层面上内在相关的观点。个体注视可能提供了记忆绑定过程所操作的基本信息单元。
