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Science 23 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5756, pp. 1963 - 1966
DOI: 10.1126/science.1117645
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Reports

Category-Specific Cortical Activity Precedes Retrieval During Memory Search

Sean M. Polyn,1* Vaidehi S. Natu,2 Jonathan D. Cohen,2,3 Kenneth A. Norman2,3

Here we describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of humans engaged in memory search during a free recall task. Patterns of cortical activity associated with the study of three categories of pictures (faces, locations, and objects) were identified by a pattern-classification algorithm. The algorithm was used to track the reappearance of these activity patterns during the recall period. The reappearance of a given category's activity pattern correlates with verbal recalls made from that category and precedes the recall event by several seconds. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that category-specific activity is cueing the memory system to retrieve studied items.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
2 Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
3 Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: polyn{at}psych.upenn.edu

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