Affiliations: University of Bielefeld, Physiological Psychology,
P.O. Box 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany | Clinic for Epilepsy, Mara, Bielefeld-Bethel,
Germany
Note: [] Corresponding author: Marie M.P. Vandekerckhove, Physiological
Psychology, University of Bielefeld, P.O. Box 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld,
Germany. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the
neural correlates of neutral, stressful, negative and positive autobiographical
memories. The brain activity produced by these different kinds of episodic
memory did not differ significantly, but a common pattern of activation for
different kinds of autobiographical memory was revealed that included (1)
largely bilateral portions of the medial and superior temporal lobes,
hippocampus and parahippocampus, (2) portions of the ventral, medial, superior
and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, (3) the anterior and posterior cingulate,
including the retrosplenial, cortex, (4) the parietal cortex, and (5) portions
of the cerebellum. The brain regions that were mainly activated constituted an
interactive network of temporal and prefrontal areas associated with structures
of the extended limbic system. The main bilateral activations with left-sided
preponderance probably reflected reactivation of complex semantic and episodic
self-related information representations that included previously experienced
contexts. In conclusion, the earlier view of a strict left versus right
prefrontal laterality in the retrieval of semantic as opposed to episodic
autobiographical memory, may have to be modified by considering contextual
variables such as task demands and subject variables. Consequently,
autobiographical memory integration should be viewed as based on distributed
bi-hemispheric neural networks supporting multi-modal, emotionally coloured
components of personal episodes.
