DISAMBIGUATION OF VISUAL STIMULI CORRELATES WITH ACTIVITY IN BILATERAL MEDIAL TEMPORAL LOBE STRUCTURES

• Main Authors: Dragos Cirneci, Florentin Preoteasa, Sorin Constantinescu3, Stelian Marian, Eugen Tarta-Arsene
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amaltea Medical Publishing House 2013-03-01
• Series: Romanian Journal of Neurology
• Subjects: dealing with ambiguity; visual perception; medial temporal lobe; anxiety
• Online Access: https://revistemedicale.amaltea.ro/Romanian_Journal_of_NEUROLOGY/Revista_Romana_de_NEUROLOGIE-2013-Nr.1/RJN_2013_1_Art-02.pdf
• ISSN: 1843-8148; 2069-6094

We are organisms adapted to recognise patterns around us in order to avoid ambiguity and indecision and there are inter-individual differences at this level. Ambiguity can be studied in the context of the decision making process, problem solving, perception of images or text comprehension. The purpose of our study is to investigate with fMRI the neural correlates of inter-individual differences related with healthy people’s performance of ambiguous images perception using a modified form of Snowy Pictures Task. We found a significant positive correlation between performance in disambiguating the pictures and bilateral activation of entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex and hippocampus (Pearson chi square = 3,86, df = 1, p < 0.05, N = 22). It is documented that tasks having a higher level of ambiguity seem to take place gradually on the ventral visual circuit axis, from occipital and occipito-temporal cortices to perirhinal cortex and finally hippocampus. Other studies revealed that hippocampus is also a key structure in modulating anxiety so our results raise the hypothesis that anxiety, at least in some situations, could be triggered by an inability of hippocampus to manage ambiguous situations.