Neural correlates of successful encoding of semantically and phonologically mediated inter-item associations

This experiment investigated whether the neural correlates of inter-item associative encoding vary according to study task. At study, pairs of unrelated words were subjected to either semantic or phonological relational judgments. Test items comprised studied word pairs (intact), pairs comprised of words belonging to different study pairs (rearranged), and novel pairs. The test requirement was to discriminate between these different classes of test item. fMRI was employed to contrast the neural activity elicited by studied pairs that were correctly endorsed as intact on the later associative recognition test, as opposed to pairs for which associative information was unavailable. In contrast to prior findings for the encoding of single items, there was no evidence that the loci of subsequent associative memory effects varied according to study task. Instead, in both tasks, pairs that were later correctly endorsed as intact elicited enhanced activity in mid- and ventral regions of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). These findings were accompanied by extensive task-invariant reversed subsequent memory effects in medial and lateral parietal and frontal cortices. The findings suggest that the left VLPFC may play a domain-general role in the encoding of item–item associations, and in addition highlight the importance of elucidating the functional significance of reversed subsequent memory effects.