Achievement

Trainee LaRogue, her primary mentor Wagner, and others in the Wagner laboratory combined theoretical ideas arising in the work of PI McClelland and others with experimental methods in an examination of the role of medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures in recognition memory. Using high-resolution fMRI and analyses of pattern similarity in humans, they examined the encoding computations subserved by MTL subregions. Specifically, they tested the theory that MTL cortex supports memory by encoding overlapping representations, whereas hippocampus supports memory by encoding pattern-separated representations. Consistent with this view, the relationship between encoding pattern similarity and subsequent memory dissociated MTL cortex and hippocampus: later memory was predicted by greater across-item pattern similarity in perirhinal cortex and in parahippocampal cortex, but greater pattern distinctiveness in hippocampus.