Facilitation of memory by contextual cues in patients with diencephalic or medial temporal lobe dysfunction

► Contextual cueing facilitates item-binding. ► Patients with diencephalic deficits or mesial temporal lobectomy profit differently. ► All groups equally profited from contextual cues in recognition tasks. ► Unilateral MTL results in normal context-item binding. ► Bilateral hippocampal-diencephalic dysfunction impairs binding.