Intrinsic medial temporal lobe connectivity relates to individual differences in episodic autobiographical remembering
People vary in how they remember the past: some recall richly detailed episodes; others more readily access the semantic features of events. The neural correlates of such trait like differences in episodic and semantic remembering are unknown. We found that self reported individual differences in how one recalls the past were related to predictable intrinsic connectivity patterns of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system. A pattern of MTL connectivity to posterior brain regions supporting visual perceptual processing (occipital/parietal cortices) was related to the endorsement of episodic memory based remembering (recalling spatiotemporal event information) whereas MTL connectivity to inferior and middle prefrontal cortical regions was related to the endorsement of semantic memory based remembering (recalling facts) These findings suggest that the tendency to engage in episodic autobiographical remembering is associated with accessing and constructing detailed images of a past event in memory, while the tendency to engage in semantic autobiographical remembering is associated with organizing and integrating higher order conceptual information. More broadly, these findings suggest that differences in how people naturally use memory are instantiated though distinct patterns of MTL functional connectivity.
Cortex