University of Sussex
Browse
Bird11688.full.pdf (690.29 kB)

Establishing the boundaries: the hippocampal contribution to imagining scenes

Download (690.29 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 18:12 authored by Chris BirdChris Bird, Corinne Capponi, John A King, Christian F Doeller, Neil Burgess
When we visualize scenes, either from our own past or invented, we impose a viewpoint for our “mind's eye” and we experience the resulting image as spatially coherent from that viewpoint. The hippocampus has been implicated in this process, but its precise contribution is unknown. We tested a specific hypothesis based on the spatial firing properties of neurons in the hippocampal formation of rats, that this region supports the construction of spatially coherent mental images by representing the locations of the environmental boundaries surrounding our viewpoint. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that hippocampal activation increases parametrically with the number of enclosing boundaries in the imagined scene. In contrast, hippocampal activity is not modulated by a nonspatial manipulation of scene complexity nor to increasing difficulty of imagining the scenes in general. Our findings identify a specific computational role for the hippocampus in mental imagery and episodic recollection.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Journal of Neuroscience

ISSN

1529-2401

Publisher

Society for Neuroscience

Issue

35

Volume

30

Page range

11688-11695

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2013-04-10

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2013-04-10

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC