Schedule of Events | Symposia

Memory Task Performance Following Brain Lesions and Stimulation Reveals Potential Neuromodulation Targets

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Simon Kwon¹ (skwon4@bwh.harvard.edu), Joshua Siegel², Melissa Hebscher³, Molly Hermiller⁴, Eyre Ye⁵, Michael Freedburg⁶, Joshua Hendrikse⁷, Gong-Jun Ji⁸, Arielle Tambini⁹, Jordan Grafman¹⁰, Maurizio Corbetta¹¹, Joel Voss³, Shan Siddiqi^1,12; ¹Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA, ²Washington University St Louis, USA, ³University of Chicago, USA, ⁴Florida State University, USA, ⁵Beijing Normal University, China, ⁶University of Texas, USA, ⁷Monash University, Australia, ⁸Anhui Medical University, China, ⁹Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, USA, ¹⁰Northwestern University, USA, ¹¹University of Padua, Italy, ¹²Harvard Medical School, USA

Therapeutic brain stimulation is believed to target specific brain circuits, but optimal targets for memory deficit remain debatable. For other symptoms, effective targets have been localized by mapping the connectivity of brain lesions and stimulation sites that modify respective symptoms. Here, we derived a novel neuromodulation target using lesions and stimulation sites that modify memory scores. We included data from a total of 570 individuals across three datasets, including penetrating head trauma (N = 179), ischemic stroke (N = 113) and transcranial magnetic stimulation to individualized hippocampal-cortical network targets (N = 278). Lesion and stimulation locations that selectively modified memory scores were connected to a common normative brain network across all three datasets. The peak region in this network was the temporooccipital part of left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG). Lesion and stimulation site connectivity to the ITG explained individual differences in memory scores across all datasets using a leave-one-dataset-out cross-validation. This novel ITG target may complement existing targets often used for modifying memory scores, such as the hippocampal-cortical network target and medial precuneus. Future clinical trials may systematically assess whether different patients may differentially benefit from these three targets.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Other