Chasing the First High: Memory Sampling in Drug Choice

Mixing memory and desire: How memory reactivation supports deliberative decision‐making

“…Finally, though we have focused here on memory sampling's involvement in two alternative forced choices, the mechanism we describe has been observed or shown to be useful in a wide array of functions. Specifically, some form of time-dependent successive sampling from rich, autobiographical memories with episodic features has been proposed in the following domains: as a mechanism for equilibrium strategy discovery in repeated multiplayer economic games (Gonçalves, 2020); to augment the learning trajectories of artificial agents via a form of "memoization" of partial inferences about environmental contingencies (Ritter et al, 2018); to explain the trajectory of symptom development in anxiety disorders, via biased sampling of threatening stimuli (Sharp et al, 2020); to explain the decision to use substances of abuse after years of abstinence (Bornstein & Pickard, 2020); and to support working memory maintenance (Hoskin et al, 2019). This ubiquity of functional impacts aligns with observations of widespread hippocampal involvement in cognition and perception (Shohamy & Turk-Browne, 2013), and more broadly concords with the centrality of this form of memory in everyday experience (Bergson, 1913).…”

“…ENDNOTES 1 We use the term "memories with episodic features" to refer to representations of past experience that exhibit dense, multi-sensory associations, formed during a single experience, which potentially include attributes incidental to goals at the time of that experience (Allen & Fortin, 2013;Bornstein & Pickard, 2020; Box 1). Though "episodic memory" has variously been defined by its relationship to conscious, declarative recall, these properties may not be functionally necessary to an influence on choices, and so we sidestep the question of awareness in the present review.…”

Computational Theories of Alcohol Use Disorder: Mapping Learning and Choice Mechanisms on Symptoms

“…A recent account additionally stressed how craving in addiction might be triggered, particularly by early positive memories of alcohol and drug intake [89]. According to this theoretical account, such vivid episodic memories (anecdotally referred to as first high or drug fantasy) are inflated and computationally outweigh the real drug value, thus contributing to persistent consumption and/or relapse.…”

Mixing memory and desire: How memory reactivation supports deliberative decision‐making

“…Finally, though we have focused here on memory sampling's involvement in two-alternative forced choice, the mechanism we describe has been observed or shown to be useful in a wide array of functions. Specifically, some form of time-dependent successive sampling from rich, autobiographical memories with episodic features has been proposed in the following domains: as a mechanism for equilibrium strategy discovery in repeated multiplayer economic games (Gonçalves, 2020) ; to augment the learning trajectories of artificial agents via a form of 'memoization' of partial inferences about environmental contingencies (Ritter et al, 2018) ; to explain the trajectory of symptom development in anxiety disorders, via biased sampling of threatening stimuli (Sharp et al, 2020) ; to explain the decision to use substances of abuse after years of abstinence (Bornstein & Pickard, 2020) ; and to support working memory maintenance (Hoskin et al, 2019) . This ubiquity of functional impacts aligns with observations of widespread hippocampal involvement in cognition and perception (Shohamy & Turk-Browne, 2013) , and more broadly concords with the centrality of this form of memory in everyday experience (Bergson, 1913) .…”