From Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Dinamics on memory formation

will present the talk titled

Post-encoding reactivation promotes one-shot learning of event episodes in humans

Abstract

In episodic encoding, the unfolding experience can be selectively transformed into different event memory traces that have the potential to be recollected. Work in rodents have provided evidence that offline reinstatement plays an important role in stabilizing memory beyond initial learning processes. However, previous studies in humans only looked at reinstatement after blocks of episodic learning or being elicited by unexpected contextual changes during encoding, rather than after the completion of an individual episodic event. Here, we asked whether the reinstatement of an episode may preferentially occur post-encoding but only when an individual perceives a meaningful event to be concluded. We asked participants to encode sequences of pictures depicting unique episodic-like events followed by an offset period. We used representational similarity analysis of scalp electroencephalography recordings during encoding and found evidence for memory reactivation of the just encoded sequence elements of the episode after encoding, i.e., at the offset of the episode. Importantly, memory reinstatement was not observed between successive elements within an episode, indicating memory reactivation was specifically induced once participants perceived the unfolding episode to be completed. We also found that memory reinstatement predicted memory recollection of an encoded episode and that offset memory reinstatement was not present when participants encoded sequences of pictures that were not perceived as meaningful episodes. These results indicate that episodic offset memory reinstatement is a mechanism selectively engaged to support rapid memory formation of single episodic events.

Location: Online (Microsoft Teams). Click here to join the meeting