Transient relay function of midline thalamic nuclei during long-term memory consolidation in humans
- Jan-Willem Thielen1,2,3,
- Atsuko Takashima1,4,
- Femke Rutters5,
- Indira Tendolkar1,2,6 and
- Guillén Fernández1,7
- 1Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Medical Center, 6537 Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- 2Department for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen, 45127 Essen, Germany
- 3Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 45127 Essen, Germany
- 4Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, 6537 Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- 5Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, VU University Medical Center, 1081 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- 6Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Medical Center, 6537 Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- 7Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Medical Center, 6537 Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Corresponding author: jan-willem.thielen{at}uni-due.de
Abstract
To test the hypothesis that thalamic midline nuclei play a transient role in memory consolidation, we reanalyzed a prospective functional MRI study, contrasting recent and progressively more remote memory retrieval. We revealed a transient thalamic connectivity increase with the hippocampus, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and a parahippocampal area, which decreased with time. In turn, mPFC-parahippocampal connectivity increased progressively. These findings support a model in which thalamic midline nuclei serve as a hub linking hippocampus, mPFC, and posterior representational areas during memory retrieval at an early (2 h) stage of consolidation, extending classical systems consolidation models by attributing a transient role to midline thalamic nuclei.
Footnotes
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.038372.115.
- Received February 6, 2015.
- Accepted June 22, 2015.
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