title: Long-term coding of personal and universal associations underlying the memory web in the human brain.
abstract: Neurons in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a critical area for declarative memory, have been shown to change their tuning in associative learning tasks. Yet, it is unclear how durable these neuronal representations are and if they outlast the execution of the task. To address this issue, we studied the responses of MTL neurons in neurosurgical patients to known concepts (people and places). Using association scores provided by the patients and a web-based metric, here we show that whenever MTL neurons respond to more than one concept, these concepts are typically related. Furthermore, the degree of association between concepts could be successfully predicted based on the neurons' response patterns. These results provide evidence for a long-term involvement of MTL neurons in the representation of durable associations, a hallmark of human declarative memory.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7QR, UK.
authors.forename: Emanuela
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: De Falco
authors.affiliation: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7QR, UK.|Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
authors.forename: Matias J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Ison
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.|Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.|Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel.|Functional Neurosurgery Unit, Tel-Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv 64239, Israel.
authors.forename: Itzhak
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fried
authors.affiliation: Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7QR, UK.|Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6534-3993
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Quian Quiroga
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004566:Electrodes; D004594:Electrophysiology; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology