The brain regions supporting schema-related processing of people’s identities

ABSTRACT

Schematic knowledge about people helps us to understand their behaviour in novel situations. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus play important, yet poorly understood, roles in schema-based processing. Here, we manipulated schematic knowledge by familiarizing participants over the course of a week to the two lead characters of one of two TV shows. Then during MRI scanning, they viewed pictures of all four characters and performed a recognition memory test afterwards. Memory was also tested for short videos. Schematic knowledge boosted performance on both memory tests. Whole-brain analyses revealed knowledge related activation increases in the vmPFC and retrosplenial cortex while a similar effect was identified in a hippocampal region-of-interest. Representational similarity analyses identified person-specific patterns of activity in the vmPFC but not hippocampus, but no effect of familiarization. Our findings suggest complementary roles for the vmPFC and hippocampus in processing schematic knowledge that was acquired in a naturalistic manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Schema
• prior knowledge
• person identity
• SLIMM
• RSA

Acknowledgements

The project was approved by the Brighton and Sussex Medical School Research Governance and Ethics Committee (RGEC). We thank Frederick Herbert for help with data collection and all of the participants for their time and enthusiasm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 819526 to C.M.B), and by an Economic and Social Research Council studentship to P.P.R (ES/J500173/1).