Fink et al. (1996)

Cerebral Representation of One’s Own Past: Neural Networks Involved in Autobiographical Memory.

Background information: The researchers investigated the correlation between brain activity, specifically in the medial temporal lobe area (location of the hippocampus, parahippocampus and amygdala), and emotional autobiographical memory.

Autobiographical memory is memory of your own life events, and usually contains more emotion than other types of memory, including memory for the life events of others.

Aim: To investigate changes in brain activity related to emotional (affect-laden) autobiographical memory.

Method: Seven healthy right-handed male volunteers aged between 27-31 years undertook a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan under three different conditions, with changes in relative regional cerebral blood flow being measured in each.

• Condition 1 – Rest. The participants rested while lying down. (Control condition).
• Condition 2 – Impersonal. The participants listened to sentences containing information taken from an autobiography of a person they did not know, but which had been presented to them before PET scanning. (Familiarity but no emotion).
• Condition 3 – Personal. Participants listened to sentences containing information taken from their own past. (Familiarity and emotion).

Results:

• When comparing the Impersonal and Rest conditions, there was an increase in blood flow in the temporal lobes in both sides of the brain in the Impersonal condition.
• When comparing the Personal and Rest conditions, the same increase as above was noted in the Personal condition, plus extra blood flow to the right temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex areas.
• When comparing the Personal and Impersonal conditions, the Personal condition demonstrated a mainly right hemispheric activation, including the right temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex areas, including the hippocampus, parahippocampus, and amygdala.

Conclusion: Right hemispheric temporal cortical areas are the key regions for autobiographical memory processing. They are supported by surrounding right hemispheric “satellite” regions such as the amygdala, hippocampus and parahippocampus.

Evaluation:

Autobiographical memory is a particular kind of episodic memory (for events, rather than processes or meaning). Previous research using brain-imaging technology has suggested that the right brain hemisphere processes episodic memory and the left hemisphere processes semantic memory.

However, it is not clear if it is the increased familiarity with one’s own autobiography, the emotion or the self-referencing (thinking about oneself) that resulted in the increased blood flow to the right hemisphere.

The study is small (7 participants) and contains no women. In the Personal – Impersonal condition comparison, only 5 out of the 7 participants showed the changes recorded. One showed no difference between the two conditions, and another showed changes in a different area of the brain. Therefore the validity of the results is open to question. More research is needed.

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