The neural substrates of recollection and familiarity

Aggleton & Brown argue that a hippocampal-anterior thalamic system supports the "recollection" of contextual information about previous events, and th at a separate perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system supports detection o f stimulus "familiarity" Although there is a growing body of human literatu re that is in agreement with these claims, when recollection and familiarit y have been examined in amnesics using the process dissociation or the reme mber/know procedures, the results do not seem to provide consistent support . We reexamine these studies and describe the results of an additional expe riment using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) technique. The resul ts of the reanalysis and the ROC experiment are consistent with Aggleton & Brown's proposal. Patients with damage to both regions exhibit severe defic its in recollection and smaller, but consistent, deficits in familiarity.