Figure 3.

Attention stabilizes patterns of activity in the hippocampus. (A) While undergoing fMRI, participants viewed 3D-rendered rooms, each with a unique layout (furniture configuration, wall angles) and painting. For each “base image”, an “art match” was a room containing a different painting that was painted by the same artist as the painting in the base image, and a “room match” was a room that had the same spatial layout as the room in the base image viewed from a different perspective. (B) Participants were cued on each trial to attend to the style of the paintings (ART) or the layout of the rooms (ROOM). They then viewed a base image followed by a search set of four images. On art trials, they had to search for an art match. On room trials, they had to search for a room match. Finally, they were probed as to whether they had seen an art or a room match (the probe usually but not always matched the cue), and had to respond yes or no. (C) Activity patterns in each hippocampal subfield region of interest were more highly correlated for trials of the same attentional state (i.e., art/art and room/room) than trials of different attentional states (i.e., art/room), thus showing state-dependent patterns of activity. (D) In CA2/CA3/DG, individual differences in the stability of activity patterns for the room attentional state predicted behavior on the room task. *** p < .001. Figure adapted from [50].