The role of the human ventromedial prefrontal cortex in memory for contextual information

There is a growing body of evidence that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is implicated in the new learning of visual items. Little is known, however, as to the involvement of that portion of the prefrontal cortex in the learning of temporal and spatial relationship of those items. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to investigate the role of the VMPFC in memory for temporal and spatial order. Patients who had undergone surgery of the anterior communicating artery aneurysm, and normal control subjects (C), participated in the study. The patients were subdivided into three groups: with resection of the left (LGR+) or right (RGR+) gyrus rectus, and without such a resection (GR-). Subjects were presented with two memory tests: a temporal order (TO) test and a spatial order (SO) test. In the TO test, the LGR+ and RGR+ groups performed worse than the C group, while the GR- group did not differ significantly from the C group. In the SO test, the LGR+ and RGR+ groups did not differ significantly from the C and GR- groups. However, the trend appears to be the same for both tests, although only the TO test provides statistically significant group differences. Our results thus suggest that the VMPFC is involved in memory for contextual information. Together with previous findings, the data suggest that the learning of the relationship between items as well as the learning of those items are mediated by overlapping areas of the VMPFC.