Rosenthal, C. R. 1 , Mallik, I. 2 , Caballero-Gaudes, C. . 3 , Sereno, M. I. 4 & Soto, D. 3, 5
1 University of Oxford
2 Imperial College London
3 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language
4 San Diego State University
5 Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science
Learning and memory are supported by a network involving the medial temporal lobe and linked neocortical regions. Emerging evidence indicates that primary sensory regions (i.e., V1) may contribute to recognition memory, but this has been only tested only with a single visuospatial sequence as the target memorandum. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test the capacity of human V1 to support the learning of multiple, concurrent and complex visual sequences involving discontinous (second-order) associations. Two peripheral, task-irrelevant but structured sequences of orientated gratings appeared simultaneously in right and left visual fields alongside a central, task-relevant sequence that was in the focus of spatial attention. Pseudorandom sequences that violated the predictability of each of the three structured visual sequences were introduced at multiple intervals during the training phase to provide an online measure of sequence-specific knowledge at each retinotopic location. We found that a network involving the precuneus and V1 was involved in learning the structured sequence presented at central fixation, whereas right V1 was modulated by repeated exposure to the concurrent structured sequence presented in the left visual field. The same result was not found in left V1. These results indicate for the first time that human V1 can support the learning of multiple concurrent sequences involving complex discontinuous inter-item associations, even peripheral sequences that are goal-irrelevant.