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Consolidation of complex events via reinstatement in posterior cingulate cortex

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posted on 2023-06-08, 23:07 authored by Chris BirdChris Bird, James L Keidel, Leslie P Ing, Aidan J Horner, Neil Burgess
It is well-established that active rehearsal increases the efficacy of memory consolidation. It is also known that complex events are interpreted with reference to prior knowledge. However, comparatively little attention has been given to the neural underpinnings of these effects. In healthy adult humans, we investigated the impact of effortful, active rehearsal on memory for events by showing people several short video clips and then asking them to recall these clips, either aloud (Experiment 1) or silently while in an MRI scanner (Experiment 2). In both experiments, actively rehearsed clips were remembered in far greater detail than unrehearsed clips when tested a week later. In Experiment 1, highly similar descriptions of events were produced across retrieval trials, suggesting a degree of semanticization of the memories had taken place. In Experiment 2, spatial patterns of BOLD signal in medial temporal and posterior midline regions were correlated when encoding and rehearsing the same video. Moreover, the strength of this correlation in the posterior cingulate predicted the amount of information subsequently recalled. This is likely to reflect a strengthening of the representation of the video's content. We argue that these representations combine both new episodic information and stored semantic knowledge (or "schemas"). We therefore suggest that posterior midline structures aid consolidation by reinstating and strengthening the associations between episodic details and more generic schematic information. This leads to the creation of coherent memory representations of lifelike, complex events that are resistant to forgetting, but somewhat inflexible and semantic-like in nature.

Funding

TRANSMEM: Fast transformation between episodic and semantic memories: Interactions between the hippocampal formation and related regions and their breakdown in Alzheimer's disease; G1268; EUROPEAN UNION; ERC-2013-STG 337822

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Journal of Neuroscience

ISSN

0270-6474

Publisher

Society for Neuroscience

Issue

43

Volume

35

Page range

14426-14434

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-02-29

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-02-29

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2015-11-10

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