海马和腹内侧前额叶皮层(vmPFC)是紧密相连的大脑区域,其功能仍在争论中。为了提供一个新的视角来理解这两个大脑区域对认知的贡献,在这篇综述中,我们考虑了通常在海马受损患者中引起缺陷的认知任务(例如,自传记忆检索),并检查了vmPFC病变患者在这些任务中的表现。然后,我们采取了认知任务,其中性能通常在vmPFC损坏后受到损害(例如,决策),并观察了海马病变如何影响这些。出现了三个突出的主题。首先,关于海马和vmPFC患者如何执行通常与另一组相关的任务,我们的知识存在令人惊讶的差距.第二,而海马或vmPFC损伤似乎对所谓海马任务的表现产生不利影响,海马和vmPFC患者在经典vmPFC任务中的表现明显不同。第三,尽管在海马任务中表现类似,仔细检查后,海马和vmPFC患者之间存在显着差异。基于这些发现,我们建议一个初步的层次模型来解释海马和vmPFC的功能。我们建议vmPFC通过协调来自新皮层区域的相关元素的策展来启动心理场景的构建,然后将它们汇入海马中以建立场景。然后,vmPFC通过新皮层和海马体的反馈循环进行迭代重新启动,以促进多个场景的流动和整合,这些场景包括扩展的心理事件的连贯展开。
The hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (
vmPFC) are closely connected brain regions whose functions are still debated. In order to offer a fresh perspective on understanding the contributions of these two brain regions to cognition, in this
review we considered cognitive tasks that usually elicit deficits in hippocampal-damaged patients (e.g., autobiographical memory retrieval), and examined the performance of vmPFC-lesioned patients on these tasks. We then took cognitive tasks where performance is typically compromised following
vmPFC damage (e.g., decision making), and looked at how these are affected by hippocampal lesions. Three salient motifs emerged. First, there are surprising gaps in our knowledge about how hippocampal and
vmPFC patients perform on tasks typically associated with the other group. Second, while hippocampal or vmPFC damage seems to adversely affect performance on so-called hippocampal tasks, the performance of hippocampal and
vmPFC patients clearly diverges on classic
vmPFC tasks. Third, although performance appears analogous on hippocampal tasks, on closer inspection, there are significant disparities between hippocampal and vmPFC patients. Based on these findings, we suggest a tentative hierarchical model to explain the functions of the hippocampus and vmPFC. We propose that the vmPFC initiates the construction of mental scenes by coordinating the curation of relevant elements from neocortical areas, which are then funneled into the hippocampus to build a scene. The vmPFC then engages in iterative re-initiation via feedback loops with neocortex and hippocampus to facilitate the flow and integration of the multiple scenes that comprise the coherent unfolding of an extended mental event.