Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305.
Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 Jul 3;34(7). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae287.
Hippocampus-parietal cortex circuits are thought to play a crucial role in memory and attention, but their neural basis remains poorly understood. We employed intracranial intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to investigate the neurophysiological underpinning of these circuits across three memory tasks spanning verbal and spatial domains. We uncovered a consistent pattern of higher causal directed connectivity from the hippocampus to both lateral parietal cortex (supramarginal and angular gyrus) and medial parietal cortex (posterior cingulate cortex) in the delta-theta band during memory encoding and recall. This connectivity was independent of activation or suppression states in the hippocampus or parietal cortex. Crucially, directed connectivity from the supramarginal gyrus to the hippocampus was enhanced in participants with higher memory recall, highlighting its behavioral significance. Our findings align with the attention-to-memory model, which posits that attention directs cognitive resources toward pertinent information during memory formation. The robustness of these results was demonstrated through Bayesian replication analysis of the memory encoding and recall periods across the three tasks. Our study sheds light on the neural basis of casual signaling within hippocampus-parietal circuits, broadening our understanding of their critical roles in human cognition.
海马-顶叶皮层回路被认为在记忆和注意力中发挥着关键作用,但它们的神经基础仍知之甚少。我们采用颅内脑电图(iEEG)技术,在三个跨越言语和空间领域的记忆任务中,研究了这些回路的神经生理学基础。我们发现在记忆编码和回忆过程中,海马到外侧顶叶皮层(缘上回和角回)和内侧顶叶皮层(后扣带回)的 delta-theta 频段的因果定向连接在整体上更高。这种连接与海马或顶叶皮层的激活或抑制状态无关。至关重要的是,缘上回到海马的定向连接在具有更高记忆回忆能力的参与者中增强,突出了其行为意义。我们的发现与注意到记忆模型一致,该模型假设在记忆形成过程中,注意力将认知资源引导到相关信息上。通过对三个任务的记忆编码和回忆阶段的贝叶斯复制分析,证明了这些结果的稳健性。我们的研究揭示了海马-顶叶回路中因果信号传递的神经基础,拓宽了我们对它们在人类认知中关键作用的理解。