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Scene processing following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

De Luca, F; McCormick, C; Ciaramelli, E; Maguire, EA; (2019) Scene processing following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. NeuroReport , 30 (12) pp. 828-833. 10.1097/WNR.0000000000001281. Green open access

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Abstract

It has been suggested that the mental construction of scene imagery is a core process underpinning functions such as autobiographical memory, future thinking and spatial navigation. Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in humans can cause deficits in all of these cognitive domains. Moreover, it has also been reported that patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions are impaired at imagining fictitious scenes, although they seem able to describe specific scenes from autobiographical events. In general, not much is known about how ventromedial prefrontal cortex patients process scenes. Here, we deployed a recently-developed task to provide insights into this issue, which involved detecting either semantic (e.g. an elephant with butterflies for ears) or constructive (e.g. an endless staircase) violations in scene images. Identifying constructive violations typically provokes the formation of internal scene models in healthy control participants. We tested patients with bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage, brain-damaged control patients and healthy control participants. We found no evidence for statistically significant differences between the groups in detecting either type of violation. These results suggest that an intact ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not necessary for some aspects of scene processing, with implications for understanding its role in functions such as autobiographical memory and future thinking.

Type: Article
Title: Scene processing following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000001281
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0000000000001281
Language: English
Additional information: © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode).
Keywords: autobiographical memory, confabulation, episodic memory, future thinking, hippocampus, impossible scenes, scene construction, scene semantics, schema, ventromedial prefrontal cortex
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10078787
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