Observing degradation of visual representations over short intervals when medial temporal lobe is damaged

David E. Warren, Melissa C. Duff, Daniel Tranel, Neal J. Cohen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

58 Scopus citations

Abstract

Medial temporal lobe (MTL) contributions to the brief maintenance of visual representations were evaluated by studying a group of patients with MTL damage. Eye movements of patients and healthy comparison subjects were tracked while performing a visual search for a target among complex stimuli of varying similarity to that target. Despite the task having no imposed delays, patients were impaired behaviorally, and eye movement measures showed abnormally rapid degradation of target representations in the patients. Eye movement data showed a modulation of the duration of fixations as a function of the similarity of fixated array lures to the target, but the effect was attenuated in patients during long fixation paths away from the sample target. This effect manifested despite patients' shorter searches and more frequent fixations of the sample target. Novel techniques provided unique insight into visual representation without healthy MTL, which may support maintenance of information through hippocampal-dependent relational binding.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)3862-3873
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume23
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2011
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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