Fig. 4: The place-memory areas constitute a distinct function network and associate closely with the hippocampus.

a Experiment 2. To assess whether the place-memory areas and scene-perception areas form distinct functional networks, participants watched an 11-minute video designed to elicit naturalistic scene understanding, comprised of several college admissions videos, real-estate listings, and architectural tours. For each participant (n = 13), the average time series from the scene-perception areas (pink, parahippocampal place area [PPA], occipital place area [OPA], and medial place area [MPA], the place-memory areas (burgundy, medial, ventral, and lateral place-memory areas [MPMA, LPMA, VPMA]), and the pairwise partial correlation was calculated. The correlation matrix depicts the average partial correlation of each area from all participants (ordered by Ward similarity). b The average pairwise partial correlation of within-network activity (Scene-perception network × Scene-perception network [SPN × SPN] and place-memory network × place-memory network [PMN × PMN]) was significantly higher than the correlation of between network activity (SPN × PMN) (F_(2,60) = 50.915, p < 0.001). c The scene-perception and place-memory areas differentially associate with the brain’s visual and memory systems (F_(3,84) = 55.5, p < 0.001). The scene-perception areas were more correlated with early visual cortex (t₁₂ = 6.05, p < 0.001), while the place-memory areas were more correlated with the hippocampus (t₁₂ = 10.64, p < 0.001), which is further evidence for their roles in perception and memory, respectively. In all plots, n.s., p > 0.05; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.