Do the medial temporal lobes resolve perceptual interference?

The role of the medial temporal lobes (MTLs) in memory was first clearly established with the case of patient HM, who suffered from an inability to form new memories following surgical removal of bilateral MTLs (Scoville and Milner, 1957). Subsequent work in humans and animals revealed that memory impairment associated with MTL damage was related to a set of subcortical and cortical structures including the hippocampus, entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortex. Recent studies have shown that some of these subregions are domain sensitive with evidence indicating that the parahippocampal gyrus and hippocampus are involved in scene recognition, whereas the perirhinal cortex is involved in recognition of individual objects (Taylor et al., 2007; Staresina et al., 2011). Despite these considerable advances in our understanding of this brain region over the last 60 years, there remain unresolved questions regarding the fundamental role the MTL plays in perception and memory.