Figure 1.

A representational-hierarchical account of cognition. Throughout the ventral stream and medial temporal lobe, stimulus features, objects, and events are represented as conjunctions of increasing dimensionality. IT, Inferotemporal. Each station in the hierarchy is engaged in the formation and retrieval of a memory to the extent that it represents the content of that memory. Particular operations (e.g., pattern completion-like retrieval, generation/readout of a memory strength signal, sharpening of a representation) can act on the representational hierarchy at all levels. Critically, this means that neither the operations, nor their putatively associated cognitive processes (e.g., recollection, familiarity, or perceptual priming) define how the pathway is carved up. Under this account, it is the hierarchy itself, rather than a set of separate memory systems, cognitive processes, or operations, that explains the organization of cognition in the ventral visual stream and MTL.