NOVELTY DIFFERENTIALLY MODULATES MEDIAL TEMP LOBE& BASAL GANGLIA MEMORY SYS

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Extensive converging evidence suggests that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) supports rapid conjunctive learning from single episodes, while the basal ganglia (BG) support incremental learning of stimulus-response associations. Recent data have raised the possibility that these neural systems may interact during learning, with other data suggesting that both systems play an important role in processing novelty. Taken together, these findings raise important questions regarding how novelty modulates different forms of memory, and the interaction between them. In this study, we used functional MRI to examine the impact of novelty on MTL and BG dynamics during associative learning and transfer. In this two-phase learning task, subjects first engaged in a concurrent, feedback-based forced-choice discrimination, where they learned to associate faces and scenes. This learning phase was followed by a transfer phase, where subjects were probed to transfer previously learned knowledge to a new context.