Lack of evidence for a role of medial temporal lobe structures in visual perception

摘要

In a Letter to the Editor in this issue, Bussey et al. (2006) provide additional data from their earlier study to support their idea that the perirhinal cortex is important for visual perception. However, Bussey and colleagues also indicate how their study might nevertheless be understood as a memory impairment rather than as a perceptual impairment. The improved design that they recommend, intended to remove the contribution of memory, is the one that we used in the study that is the subject of their Letter. In our study, and also in a subsequent study, patients with extensive medial temporal lobe lesions, as well as patients with limited hippocampal lesions, were intact in all tests of visual perception. At this time, there is a lack of evidence that the medial temporal lobe is involved in visual perception. In contrast, there is compelling evidence, accumulated over more than four decades, that the medial temporal lobe is important for memory.