以色列魏茨曼科学研究所Rafael Malach课题组的近期研究认为海马尖波波纹与人类的视觉情景记忆有关。相关论文发表在2019年8月16日出版的《科学》杂志上。

海马尖波波纹（SWR）构成大脑中最同步的激活事件之一，并在离线记忆巩固中发挥关键作用。然而，其在清醒，有意识的行为中的认知内容和功能仍然不清楚。研究人员在人类患者中使用颅内记录直接测试了这个问题，通过让他们对以前观看过的照片的进行情节自由地回忆。研究结果显示，在回忆事件发生前1至2秒，海马纹波率出现内容选择性增加。在回忆过程中，高阶视觉区域显示出与回忆内容相关激活模式的明显SWR耦合重现。最后，编码期间的SWR速率能够预测后续自由回忆的表现。

这些结果揭示，海马SWR在触发自发回忆和在自由情景记忆检索期间协调皮层代表区恢复中的作用。

附：英文原文

Title: Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples linked to visual episodic recollection in humans

Author: Yitzhak Norman, Erin M. Yeagle, Simon Khuvis, Michal Harel, Ashesh D. Mehta, Rafael Malach

Issue&Volume: Volume 365 Issue 6454

Abstract:Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) constitute one of the most synchronized activation events in the brain and play a critical role in offline memory consolidation. Yet their cognitive content and function during awake, conscious behavior remains unclear. We directly examined this question using intracranial recordings in human patients engaged in episodic free recall of previously viewed photographs. Our results reveal a content-selective increase in hippocampal ripple rate emerging 1 to 2 seconds prior to recall events. During recollection, high-order visual areas showed pronounced SWR-coupled reemergence of activation patterns associated with recalled content. Finally, the SWR rate during encoding predicted subsequent free-recall performance. These results point to a role for hippocampal SWRs in triggering spontaneous recollections and orchestrating the reinstatement of cortical representations during free episodic memory retrieval.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1030

Source:https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6454/eaax1030