title: Dynamic changes in prefrontal cortex involvement during verbal episodic memory formation.
abstract: During encoding, the neural activity immediately before or during an event can predict whether that event will be later remembered. The contribution of brain activity immediately after an event to memory formation is however less known. Here, we used repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to investigate the temporal dynamics of episodic memory encoding with a focus on post-stimulus time intervals. At encoding, rTMS was applied during the online processing of the word, at its offset, or 100, 200, 300 or 400ms thereafter. rTMS was delivered to the left ventrolateral (VLPFC) or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). VLPFC rTMS during the first few hundreds of milliseconds after word offset disrupted subsequent recognition accuracy. We did not observe effects of DLPFC rTMS at any time point. These results suggest that encoding-related VLPFC engagement starts at a relatively late processing stage, and may reflect brain processes related to the offset of the stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, Unit of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology, Brain Investigation & Neuromodulation Lab (Si-Bin), University of Siena, Siena, Italy; Department of Psychology, Kingston University, London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: g.galli@kingston.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, Unit of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology, Brain Investigation & Neuromodulation Lab (Si-Bin), University of Siena, Siena, Italy; School of Psychology, Centre for Cognition and Decision Making, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Feurra
authors.affiliation: Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Roma Italy.
authors.forename: Enea Francesco
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Pavone
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Miroslav
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sirota
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, Unit of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology, Brain Investigation & Neuromodulation Lab (Si-Bin), University of Siena, Siena, Italy; Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, Human Physiology Section, University of Siena, Italy.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rossi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Episodic memory; Memory formation; Prefrontal cortex; rTMS