Neuronal activity in human right lateral temporal cortex related to visuospatial memory and perception.

Neuronal activity was recorded extracellularly from 22 neurons in the right lateral temporal cortex of 12 patients undergoing awake craniotomy for surgical treatment of epilepsy during tests of visuospatial function. These included: measures of short-term visuospatial memory; face, complex figure and line matching; labeling of facial emotional expressions; and a language task, object naming. Six neurons demonstrated significant changes during one or more of the three 1.3-s epochs following test presentation. All 6 of these neurons demonstrated inhibition during short-term visuospatial memory entry, or retrieval, or both. Four of the neurons also showed significant changes during one or more matching tasks; 8 of 10 of these changes were excitatory. One neuron also demonstrated excitation with labeling of facial emotional expression and another with naming. These data demonstrate in human right lateral temporal cortex a pattern of inhibition of neuronal activity during short-term visuospatial memory that contrasts with excitation during other functions, particularly figure matching.