Although the present results are more consistent with the hippocampal coupling hypothesis than with the internal orienting account, our data is not necessarily inconsistent with an attention account that does not emphasize the internal/external distinction. For example, according to the attention to memory (AtoM) model the role of parietal regions in episodic retrieval reflect the same attentional operations that these regions contribute to perceptual processing. In particular, this model proposes that activity in the ventral parietal cortex (VPC), which includes the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), reflects the capture of bottom-up attention by incoming information, either from the senses (perception) or from long-term memory (retrieval). In other words, VPC mediates bottom-up attentional processes regardless of whether they information capturing processed is internal or external. This model could account for the current finding that VPC activity was not affected by the internal/external manipulation, either during encoding or during retrieval.
