Abstract

Prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results suggest that true memories, but not false memories, activate early sensory cortex. It is thought that false memories, which reflect conscious processing, do not activate early sensory cortex because these regions are associated with nonconscious processing. We posited that false memories may activate the earliest visual cortical processing region (i.e., V1) when task conditions are manipulated to evoke conscious processing in this region. In an fMRI experiment, abstract shapes were presented to the left or right of fixation during encoding. During retrieval, old shapes were presented at fixation and participants characterized each shape as previously on the "left" or "right" followed by an "unsure"–"sure"–"very sure" confidence rating. False memories for spatial location (i.e., "right"/left or "left"/right trials with "sure" or "very sure" confidence ratings) were associated with activity in bilateral early visual regions, including V1. In a follow-up fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiment that employed the same paradigm, we assessed whether V1 activity was necessary for false memory construction. Between the encoding phase and the retrieval phase of each run, TMS (1 Hz, 8 min) was used to target the location of false memory activity (identified in the fMRI experiment) in left V1, right V1, or the vertex (control site). Confident false memories for spatial location were significantly reduced following TMS to V1, as compared to vertex. The results of the present experiments provide convergent evidence that early sensory cortex can contribute to false memory construction under particular task conditions.