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Representations formed by procedural and declarative category learning are supported by overlapping sets of cortical areas

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

Dr. Priya B. Kalra¹ (pkalra7@uwo.ca), J. Paul Minda¹, Laura Batterink¹, Marc Joanisse¹; ¹University of Western Ontario

In a previous behavioral study (Kalra et al. 2024) we demonstrated that both procedural learning and declarative learning can simultaneously contribute to response selection within a trial. We now ask whether procedural and declarative learning contribute to a shared representation of the stimulus space, or whether there are distinct procedurally-learned and declaratively-learned representations that jointly contribute to response selection. We used the same behavioral paradigm with fMRI data acquisition. Preliminary univariate analysis revealed greater activation in a fronto-parietal network (including inferior frontal gyrus, ventro-medial frontal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule), as well as striatal areas, when procedural and declarative learning suggested opposite responses than when they suggested the same response. Preliminary representational similarity analysis (RSA) suggested that some areas were sensitive to the representations created by both procedural and declarative learning. Further analysis is expected to shed more light on the research question.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Other