PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Soyeon Jun
AU  - June Sic Kim
AU  - Chun Kee Chung
TI  - Hippocampal Neuronal Activity Preceding Stimulus Predicts Later Memory Success
AID  - 10.1523/ENEURO.0252-22.2023
DP  - 2023 Feb 01
TA  - eneuro
PG  - ENEURO.0252-22.2023
VI  - 10
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/10/2/ENEURO.0252-22.2023.short
4100  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/10/2/ENEURO.0252-22.2023.full
SO  - eNeuro2023 Feb 01; 10
AB  - Hippocampal neuronal activity at a time preceding stimulus onset affects episodic memory performance. We hypothesized that neuronal activity preceding an event supports successful memory formation; therefore, we explored whether a characterized encoding-associated brain activity, viz. the neuronal activity preceding a stimulus, predicts subsequent memory formation. To address this issue, we assessed the activity of single neurons recorded from the hippocampus in humans, while participants performed word memory tasks. Human hippocampal single-unit activity elicited by a fixation cue preceding words increased the firing rates (FRs) and predicted whether the words are recalled in a subsequent memory test; this indicated that successful memory formation in humans can be predicted by a preceding stimulus activity during encoding. However, the predictive effect of preceding stimulus activity did not occur during retrieval. These findings suggest that the preparative arrangement of brain activity before stimulus encoding improves subsequent memory performance.