Our ability to recall past experiences, autobiographical memories (AMs), is crucial to cognition, endowing us with a sense of self and underwriting our capacity for autonomy. Traditional views assume that the hippocampus orchestrates event recall, whereas recent accounts propose that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) instigates and coordinates hippocampal-dependent processes. Here we sought to characterize the dynamic interplay between the hippocampus and vmPFC during AM recall to adjudicate between these perspectives. Leveraging the high temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography, we found that the left hippocampus and the vmPFC showed the greatest power changes during AM retrieval. Moreover, responses in the vmPFC preceded activity in the hippocampus during initiation of AM recall, except during retrieval of the most recent AMs. The vmPFC drove hippocampal activity during recall initiation and also as AMs unfolded over subsequent seconds, and this effect was evident regardless of AM age. These results recast the positions of the hippocampus and the vmPFC in the AM retrieval hierarchy, with implications for theoretical accounts of memory processing and systems-level consolidation.

中文翻译：

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vmPFC 在自传体记忆回忆期间驱动海马处理，无论距离远近。

我们回忆过去经历、自传体记忆 (AMs) 的能力对认知至关重要，赋予我们自我意识并保证我们的自主能力。传统观点假设海马体协调事件回忆，而最近的报道提出腹内侧前额叶皮层 (vmPFC) 激发和协调海马体依赖过程。在这里，我们试图描述 AM 回忆期间海马体和 vmPFC 之间的动态相互作用，以在这些观点之间做出判断。利用脑磁图的高时间分辨率，我们发现左海马和 vmPFC 在 AM 检索期间显示出最大的功率变化。此外，在 AM 回忆开始期间，vmPFC 的反应先于海马体的活动，但在检索最近的 AM 期间除外。vmPFC 在回忆开始期间以及随着 AMs 在随后几秒钟内展开时驱动海马活动，无论 AM 年龄如何，这种效果都很明显。这些结果重新定义了海马体和 vmPFC 在 AM 检索层次结构中的位置，对记忆处理和系统级整合的理论解释有影响。