Neural Correlates of Recency Judgment

The prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in recollecting the temporal context of past events. The present study used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and explored the neural correlates of temporal-order retrieval during a recency judgment paradigm. In this paradigm, after study of a list of words presented sequentially, subjects were presented with two of the studied words simultaneously and were asked which of the two words was studied more recently. Two types of such retrieval trials with varied (high and low) levels of demand for temporal-order retrieval were intermixed and compared using event-related fMRI. The intraparadigm comparison of high versus low demand trials revealed brain regions with activation that was modulated on the basis of demand for temporal-order retrieval. Multiple lateral prefrontal regions including the middle and inferior lateral prefrontal cortex were prominently activated. Activation was also observed in the anterior prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal cortex, regions well documented to be related to memory retrieval in general. The modulation of brain activity in these regions suggests a detailed pathway that is engaged during recency judgment.