Activation of right parietal cortex during memory retrieval of nonlinguistic auditory stimuli.

Full Abstract

In neuroimaging studies, the left ventral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is particularly active during memory retrieval. However, most studies have used verbal or verbalizable stimuli. We investigated neural activations associated with the retrieval of short, agrammatical music stimuli (Blackwood, 2004), which have been largely associated with right hemisphere processing. At study, participants listened to music stimuli and rated them on pleasantness. At test, participants made old/new recognition judgments with high/low confidence ratings. Right, but not left, ventral PPC activity was observed during the retrieval of these music stimuli. Thus, rather than indicating a special status of left PPC in retrieval, both right and left ventral PPC participate in memory retrieval, depending on the type of information that is to be remembered.

Author information

Author/s: Klostermann, Ellen C (EC); Loui, Psyche (P); Shimamura, Arthur P (AP);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA. eklostermann(-atsign-)berkeley.edu

Grants: NS040813 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Journal: Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience (Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Sep; vol 9 (issue 3) : pp 242-8

Dates: Created 2009/08/14; Completed 2009/10/26;

PMID: 19679760, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/26/2009, IMS Date: )

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