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<p>Neuroimaging studies of episodic memory, or memory of events from our personal
past, have predominantly focused their attention on medial temporal lobe (MTL). There
is growing acknowledgement however, from the cognitive neuroscience of memory literature,
that regions outside the MTL can support episodic memory processes. The medial prefrontal
cortex is one such region garnering increasing interest from researchers. Using behavioral
and functional magnetic resonance imaging measures, over two studies, this thesis
provides evidence of a mnemonic role of the medial PFC. In the first study, participants
were scanned while judging the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the sociopolitical
views of unfamiliar individuals. Behavioral tests of associative recognition revealed
that participants remembered with high confidence viewpoints previously linked with
judgments of strong agreement/disagreement. Neurally, the medial PFC mediated the
interaction between high-confidence associative recognition memory and beliefs associated
with strong agree/disagree judgments. In an effort to generalize this finding to well-established
associative information, in the second study, we investigated associative recognition
memory for real-world concepts. Object-scene pairs congruent or incongruent with a
preexisting schema were presented to participants in a cued-recall paradigm. Behavioral
tests of conceptual and perceptual recognition revealed memory enhancements arising
from strong resonance between presented pairs and preexisting schemas. Neurally, the
medial PFC tracked increases in visual recall of schema-congruent pairs whereas the
MTL tracked increases in visual recall of schema-incongruent pairs. Additionally,
ventral areas of the medial PFC tracked conceptual components of visual recall specifically
for schema-congruent pairs. These findings are consistent with a recent theoretical
proposal of medial PFC contributions to memory for schema-related content. Collectively,
these studies provide evidence of a role for the medial PFC in associative recognition
memory persisting for associative information deployed in our daily social interactions
and for those associations formed over multiple learning episodes. Additionally, this
set of findings advance our understanding of the cognitive contributions of the medial
PFC beyond its canonical role in processes underlying social cognition.</p>
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