ABSTRACT
Understanding the mechanisms and properties of visual long-term memory in humans has substantially benefited from representation-based analyses that characterize how the information content of memories is reflected in patterns of neural activity. The current chapter reviews evidence—primarily from human neuroimaging studies—characterizing neural representations of visual memories during memory encoding and, separately, during subsequent acts of memory retrieval. Points of emphasis include (1) how representational qualities during encoding and retrieval relate to behavioral expressions of, or changes in, memory, and (2) how representational qualities differ across distinct brain regions—including the early and late visual cortex, the hippocampus, and higher-level frontoparietal regions. The reviewed evidence reveals a number of fundamental insights into the mechanisms that support visual memory, uniquely afforded by representation-based analyses.
