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Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks

Recalling the past, thinking about the future, and navigating in the world are linked with a brain structure called the hippocampus. Precisely, how the hippocampus enables these critical cognitive functions is still debated. The strategies people use to perform tasks associated with these functions...

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Autores principales: Clark, Ian A., Monk, Anna M., Maguire, Eleanor A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7490521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32982868
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02119
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author Clark, Ian A.
Monk, Anna M.
Maguire, Eleanor A.
author_facet Clark, Ian A.
Monk, Anna M.
Maguire, Eleanor A.
author_sort Clark, Ian A.
collection PubMed
description Recalling the past, thinking about the future, and navigating in the world are linked with a brain structure called the hippocampus. Precisely, how the hippocampus enables these critical cognitive functions is still debated. The strategies people use to perform tasks associated with these functions have been under-studied, and yet, such information could augment our understanding of the associated cognitive processes and neural substrates. Here, we devised and deployed an in-depth protocol to examine the explicit strategies used by 217 participants to perform four naturalistic tasks widely acknowledged to be hippocampal-dependent, namely, those assessing scene imagination, autobiographical memory recall, future thinking, and spatial navigation. In addition, we also investigated strategy use for three laboratory-based memory tasks, one of which is held to be hippocampal-dependent – concrete verbal paired associates (VPA) – and two tasks, which are likely hippocampal-independent – abstract VPA and the dead or alive semantic memory test. We found that scene visual imagery was the dominant strategy not only when mentally imagining scenes, but also during autobiographical memory recall, when thinking about the future and during navigation. Moreover, scene visual imagery strategies were used most frequently during the concrete VPA task, whereas verbal strategies were most prevalent for the abstract VPA task and the dead or alive semantic memory task. The ubiquity of specifically scene visual imagery use across a range of tasks may attest to its, perhaps underappreciated, importance in facilitating cognition, while also aligning with perspectives that emphasize a key role for the hippocampus in constructing scene imagery.
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spelling pubmed-74905212020-09-25 Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks Clark, Ian A. Monk, Anna M. Maguire, Eleanor A. Front Psychol Psychology Recalling the past, thinking about the future, and navigating in the world are linked with a brain structure called the hippocampus. Precisely, how the hippocampus enables these critical cognitive functions is still debated. The strategies people use to perform tasks associated with these functions have been under-studied, and yet, such information could augment our understanding of the associated cognitive processes and neural substrates. Here, we devised and deployed an in-depth protocol to examine the explicit strategies used by 217 participants to perform four naturalistic tasks widely acknowledged to be hippocampal-dependent, namely, those assessing scene imagination, autobiographical memory recall, future thinking, and spatial navigation. In addition, we also investigated strategy use for three laboratory-based memory tasks, one of which is held to be hippocampal-dependent – concrete verbal paired associates (VPA) – and two tasks, which are likely hippocampal-independent – abstract VPA and the dead or alive semantic memory test. We found that scene visual imagery was the dominant strategy not only when mentally imagining scenes, but also during autobiographical memory recall, when thinking about the future and during navigation. Moreover, scene visual imagery strategies were used most frequently during the concrete VPA task, whereas verbal strategies were most prevalent for the abstract VPA task and the dead or alive semantic memory task. The ubiquity of specifically scene visual imagery use across a range of tasks may attest to its, perhaps underappreciated, importance in facilitating cognition, while also aligning with perspectives that emphasize a key role for the hippocampus in constructing scene imagery. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7490521/ /pubmed/32982868 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02119 Text en Copyright © 2020 Clark, Monk and Maguire. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Clark, Ian A.
Monk, Anna M.
Maguire, Eleanor A.
Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title_full Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title_fullStr Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title_short Characterizing Strategy Use During the Performance of Hippocampal-Dependent Tasks
title_sort characterizing strategy use during the performance of hippocampal-dependent tasks
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7490521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32982868
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02119
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