The subiculum: a key interface between scene representation and event memory?
Award Number
BB/V008242/1Status / Stage
ActiveDates
28 February 2022 -27 February 2025
Duration (calculated)
02 years 11 monthsFunder(s)
BBSRC (UKRI)Funding Amount
£572,711.00Funder/Grant study page
BBSRC UKRIContracted Centre
Cardiff UniversityContracted Centre Webpage
Principal Investigator
Prof. Andrew LawrencePI Contact
lawrencead@cardiff.ac.ukPI ORCID
0000-0002-5853-5409WHO Catergories
Understanding Underlying DiseaseDisease Type
Cognitive ImpairmentCPEC Review Info
| Reference ID | 376 |
|---|---|
| Researcher | Reside Team |
| Published | 12/06/2023 |
Data
| Award Number | BB/V008242/1 |
|---|---|
| Status / Stage | Active |
| Start Date | 20220228 |
| End Date | 20250227 |
| Duration (calculated) | 02 years 11 months |
| Funder/Grant study page | BBSRC UKRI |
| Contracted Centre | Cardiff University |
| Contracted Centre Webpage | |
| Funding Amount | £572,711.00 |
Abstract
The subiculum lies at the interface between the hippocampus and the rest of the brain, and thus possesses unique significance for understanding human memory and how it emerges via anatomical and functional interactions within a broader neural network supporting scene representation, event memory and navigation. The subiculum’s strategic anatomical position in the brain is also thought to confer particular vulnerability to poor later life cognitive outcomes in old age, as well as increased risk of dementia. Despite this, remarkably little is known about the subiculum’s functional and connectional neuroanatomy in humans. We will address this gap in our knowledge in this proposal by applying multimodal 7T imaging to investigate how the human subiculum – via its unique anatomical connectivity within an extended brain network – contributes to scene representation and event memory. First, we will fuse whole-brain high-resolution diffusion and functional MRI (1.2mm isotropic) to map the extrinsic connections of the subiculum and their topography, thus providing vital new knowledge about how the subiculum is organised in the living human brain. Second, we will use ultra-high-resolution fMRI (0.8mm isotropic), focused on the hippocampus and posteromedial cortex, to test whether the subiculum integrates scenes into unified representations during perception and memory. Finally, we will use a naturalistic movie-viewing paradigm to test whether the subiculum’s putative role in scene representation underpins a broader role in event perception and memory. The findings from this proposal have the potential to reveal new insights into the neuroarchitecture of brain circuitry supporting human event memory, and facilitate the development of novel cognitive tools for assessing brain health across the life course.
Aims
The first aim is to better understand the anatomical connectivity of the human subiculum, informed by work on animals. We will combine both structural and functional brain imaging to ‘map out’ how the subiculum is connected in the human brain, and compare this connectivity map to that seen in monkeys using an open-source dataset. Our second aim is to use high-resolution functional brain imaging to investigate the precise role of the subiculum in representing scene information.