Research reveals parts of the brain that store memories of familiar places

According to a new study at Dartmouth College, three regions of the brain in the posterior cerebral cortex, which researchers call “place memory regions,” form links between the brain’s sensory and memory systems, making the brain familiar. place.

The findings are published in Nature Communications.

“When we navigate around, information enters the visual cortex and somehow ends up as knowledge of where we are. The question is where this transformation to spatial knowledge occurs. Location storage area. This could be where this happens, “explains Adam Steel, lead author, Neukom Fellow, Department of Psychology and Brain Science, Robertson Institute in Dartmouth.

“Looking at the location of the brain regions that process visual scenes and the brain regions that process spatial memory, these locational storage regions literally form a bridge between the two systems. Each brain region involved in visual processing is a location. -It’s a memory counterpart. “

Innovative methodologies were adopted in this study. Participants were asked to recognize and remember where they had been in the real world during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which created a high-resolution subject-specific map of brain activity. ..

Past studies of scene perception and memory often use stimuli that participants know but have never visited, such as famous landmarks, and have pooled data across many subjects. It was. By mapping the brain activity of individual participants using real-world locations they have been to, researchers were able to unravel the fine-grained tissue of the brain.

In one experiment, 14 participants provided a list of people they knew personally and places they actually visited (for example, fathers and children’s homes).

Then, while using the fMRI scanner, I imagined that participants were looking at those people or visiting those places. Comparing human and location brain activity revealed location memory areas. Importantly, when researchers compared these newly identified regions to the brain regions that process the visual scene, the new regions overlapped, but were different.

“We were surprised,” says Steele. “The classical understanding is that the perceived area of ​​the brain must be the same as the area involved in memory recall.”

In another experiment, the team investigated whether location storage was involved in recognizing familiar locations. During the fMRI scan, participants were presented with a pan image of a familiar or unfamiliar real-world location downloaded from Google Street View.

Researchers examined neural activity and found that the memory area of ​​a place was more active when an image of a familiar place was displayed. Looking at familiar places, the scene perception area did not show the same emphasis. This suggests that the place storage area plays an important role in recognizing a familiar place.

“Our findings help explain how the general image of a clock tower becomes what we perceive, like the Tower of the Baker-Berry Library here on the Dartmouth campus. “Steel says.

“Discovering a new set of brain regions is thrilling,” said Caroline Robertson, an assistant professor of psychology and brain science at Dartmouth College. “Learning how the mind is organized is at the heart of our quest to understand what makes us human.”

“The location memory network provides a new framework for understanding the neural processes that drive memory-guided visual behavior, including navigation,” explains Robertson.

The research team is currently using virtual reality technology to investigate how the representation of the storage area of ​​a place evolves as people become accustomed to the new environment.

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