Baylis G C, Rolls E T
Exp Brain Res. 1987;65(3):614-22. doi: 10.1007/BF00235984.
Gaffan and Weiskrantz (1980) and Mishkin (1982) have shown that lesions to the inferior temporal visual cortex can impair the performance of serial visual recognition memory tasks. In order to provide evidence on whether the inferior temporal visual cortex contains a mechanism which enables memory to span the intervening items in a serial recognition task, or whether the inferior temporal cortex is merely afferent to such recent memory mechanisms, we analysed the activity of single neurons in the inferior temporal visual cortex and the adjacent cortex in the superior temporal sulcus in both delayed match to sample and serial recognition memory tasks. In the serial recognition task, various numbers of stimuli intervened between the first and second presentations of a stimulus. A considerable proportion (64/264 or 26%) of visually responsive inferotemporal neurons showed a different response to the "novel" and "familiar" presentations of a stimulus in the serial recognition memory task, and often a corresponding difference in response between the sample and match presentations of a stimulus in the delayed match to sample task. For the majority of neurons this difference was not sustained across even one intervening stimulus in the serial recognition task, and no neurons bridged more than 2 intervening stimuli. These results show that neurons in the inferior temporal cortex have responses which would be useful for a short term visual memory for stimuli, but would not be useful in recency memory tasks in which more than one stimulus intervenes between the first and second presentations of a stimulus. In this investigation, neurons were recorded both in the cortex on the inferior temporal gyrus (commonly called inferior temporal visual cortex, and consisting of areas TE3, TE2 and TE1 of Seltzer and Pandya 1978), and in the cortex in the adjacent anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus, in which a number of different temporal cortical visual areas have now been described.
加凡和韦斯克兰茨（1980年）以及米什金（1982年）已经表明，颞下回视觉皮层受损会损害系列视觉识别记忆任务的表现。为了提供证据，证明颞下回视觉皮层是否包含一种机制，使记忆能够跨越系列识别任务中的中间项目，或者颞下回皮层是否仅仅是这种近期记忆机制的传入通道，我们分析了颞下回视觉皮层和颞上沟相邻皮层中单个神经元在延迟样本匹配和系列识别记忆任务中的活动。在系列识别任务中，在一个刺激的第一次和第二次呈现之间插入了不同数量的刺激。在系列识别记忆任务中，相当一部分（64/264或26%）对视觉有反应的颞下神经元对刺激的“新”和“熟悉”呈现表现出不同的反应，并且在延迟样本匹配任务中，刺激的样本和匹配呈现之间的反应通常也有相应差异。对于大多数神经元来说，这种差异在系列识别任务中甚至连一个中间刺激都无法持续，并且没有神经元能跨越超过2个中间刺激。这些结果表明，颞下皮层中的神经元具有的反应，对于刺激的短期视觉记忆是有用的，但对于在一个刺激的第一次和第二次呈现之间有多个刺激介入的近期记忆任务则无用。在这项研究中，神经元记录是在颞下回的皮层（通常称为颞下视觉皮层，由塞尔策和潘迪亚1978年定义的TE3、TE2和TE1区域组成）以及颞上沟相邻前部的皮层中进行的，在该区域现已描述了许多不同的颞叶皮层视觉区域。
