Brain regions differentially involved in remembering what and when: a PET study

Recollecting a past episode involves remembering not only what happened but also when it happened. We used positron emission tomography (PET) to directly contrast the neural correlates of item and temporal-order memory. Subjects studied a list of words and were then scanned while retrieving information about what words were in the list or when they occurred within the list. Item retrieval was related to increased neural activity in medial temporal and basal forebrain regions, whereas temporal-order retrieval was associated with activations in dorsal prefrontal, cuneus/precuneus, and right posterior parietal regions. The dissociation between temporal and frontal robe regions confirms and extends previous lesion data. The results show that temporal-order retrieval involves a network of frontal and posterior brain regions.