Imaging episodic memory: Implications for cognitive theories and phenomena

Functional neuroimaging studies are beginning to identify neuroanatomical c orrelates of various cognitive functions. This paper presents results relev ant to several theories and phenomena of episodic memory, including compone nt processes of episodic retrieval, encoding specificity, inhibition, item versus source memory, encoding-retrieval overlap, and the picture-superiori ty effect. Overall, by revealing specific activation patterns, the results provide support for existing theoretical views and they add some unique inf ormation which may be important to consider in future attempts to develop c ognitive theories of episodic memory.