Opposing anterior hippocampal correlations with autobiographical memory vividness in recent versus remote life periods

Poster Session C - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Tabatha Blaney-Gale¹ (22jqyl@queensu.ca), Jordan Poppenk¹; ¹Queen's University

What determines how immersively we experience our past? When reliving past events, some individuals report doing so with greater vividness, which is thought to reflect the degree to which a memory is re-experienced. Both autobiographical episodic memory and vividness have been linked to the hippocampus; as the posterior hippocampus is hypothesized to play host to greater detail, here we probed for a possible association between self-reported memory vividness and anterior and posterior hippocampus volumes. Sixty participants completed autobiographical memory interviews from childhood, adolescence, early adulthood and the prior year, followed by high-resolution MRI scans on a later date. We found that the volume of the anterior hippocampal region was positively correlated with the vividness ratings of recent memories, but negatively correlated with the vividness ratings of childhood memories. The posterior hippocampal region did not correlate with ratings from any life period. This absence of posterior hippocampus correlation suggests that vividness ratings might follow from generalized mental maps of autobiographical memories rather than detailed re-creations. Opposing correlations of subjectively experienced autobiographical vividness with the anterior hippocampus in recent versus remote periods poses an interesting puzzle: possible explanations are discussed.

Topic Area: OTHER