Tangled Up in Confounds - Unravelling the Controversial Roles of MTL-structures in Familiarity and Recollection

Recognition memory is commonly divided into ‘knowing that you encountered something before’ (familiarity) and ‘remembering specific, accompanying details’ (recollection). To date, no consensus could be reached concerning the methodological validity, nor the neuronal correlates of familiarity and recollection within the medial temporal lobe. Specifically, a dual-process model and a multi-attribute hypothesis compete about the role of the hippocampus in solely recollection or both recollection and familiarity, while neither one provides conclusive arguments. The current paper aims at evaluation of the reasoning within this controversy and brings up a novel perspective as well as consequent research suggestions