BEYOND HERA - CONTRIBUTIONS OF SPECIFIC PREFRONTAL BRAIN-AREAS TO LONG-TERM-MEMORY RETRIEVAL

Recent neuroimaging studies have provided a wealth of information abou t areas within prefrontal cortex involved in long-term memory. These s tudies prompted a proposal by Tulving and colleagues (Tulving, Kapur, Craik, Habib, & Houle, 1994) that prefrontal contributions to memory f unction are related to laterality differences (the hemispheric encodin g/retrieval asymmetry model). This review goes beyond a general charac terization of prefrontal lobes to a more specific analysis of distinct areas within the prefrontal cortex. Separate prefrontal areas, someti mes within the same hemisphere, are discussed in terms of selective co ntributions that they might make to memory retrieval. In the end, it i s concluded that a framework which tries to understand prefrontal func tion in terms of specific areas is a useful complement to models, like HERA, which attempt to find unifying principles across multiple areas .