TY - JOUR
T1 - Intrinsic monitoring of learning success facilitates memory encoding via the activation of the SN/VTA-hippocampal loop
AU - Ripollés, Pablo
AU - Marco-Pallarés, Josep
AU - Alicart, Helena
AU - Tempelmann, Claus
AU - Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
AU - Noesselt, Toemme
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Ripollés et al.
PY - 2016/9/20
Y1 - 2016/9/20
N2 - Humans constantly learn in the absence of explicit rewards. However, the neurobiological mechanisms supporting this type of internally-guided learning (without explicit feedback) are still unclear. Here, participants who completed a task in which no external reward/ feedback was provided, exhibited enhanced fMRI-signals within the dopaminergic midbrain, hippocampus, and ventral striatum (the SN/VTA-Hippocampal loop) when successfully grasping the meaning of new-words. Importantly, new-words that were better remembered showed increased activation and enhanced functional connectivity between the midbrain, hippocampus, and ventral striatum. Moreover, enhanced emotion-related physiological measures and subjective pleasantness ratings during encoding were associated with remembered new-words after 24 hr. Furthermore, increased subjective pleasantness ratings were also related to new-words remembered after seven days. These results suggest that intrinsic-potentially reward-related-signals, triggered by self-monitoring of correct performance, can promote the storage of new information into long-term memory through the activation of the SN/VTA-Hippocampal loop, possibly via dopaminergic modulation of the midbrain.
AB - Humans constantly learn in the absence of explicit rewards. However, the neurobiological mechanisms supporting this type of internally-guided learning (without explicit feedback) are still unclear. Here, participants who completed a task in which no external reward/ feedback was provided, exhibited enhanced fMRI-signals within the dopaminergic midbrain, hippocampus, and ventral striatum (the SN/VTA-Hippocampal loop) when successfully grasping the meaning of new-words. Importantly, new-words that were better remembered showed increased activation and enhanced functional connectivity between the midbrain, hippocampus, and ventral striatum. Moreover, enhanced emotion-related physiological measures and subjective pleasantness ratings during encoding were associated with remembered new-words after 24 hr. Furthermore, increased subjective pleasantness ratings were also related to new-words remembered after seven days. These results suggest that intrinsic-potentially reward-related-signals, triggered by self-monitoring of correct performance, can promote the storage of new information into long-term memory through the activation of the SN/VTA-Hippocampal loop, possibly via dopaminergic modulation of the midbrain.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84988517611&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84988517611&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.7554/eLife.17441
DO - 10.7554/eLife.17441
M3 - Article
C2 - 27644419
AN - SCOPUS:84988517611
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 5
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
IS - September
M1 - e17441
ER -