How to optimize knowledge construction in the brain

Abstract

Well-structured knowledge allows us to quickly understand the world around us and make informed decisions to adequately control behavior. Knowledge structures, or schemas, are presumed to aid memory encoding and consolidation of new experiences so we cannot only remember the past, but also guide behavior in the present and predict the future. However, very strong schemas can also lead to unwanted side effects such as false memories and misconceptions. To overcome this overreliance on a schema, we should aim to create robust schemas that are on the one hand strong enough to help to remember and predict, but also malleable enough to avoid such undesirable side effects. This raises the question as to whether there are ways to deliberately influence knowledge construction processes, with the goal to reach such optimally balanced schemas. Here, we will discuss how the mnemonic processes in our brains build long-term knowledge and, more specifically, how different phases of memory formation (encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation) contribute to this schema build-up. We finally provide ways how to best keep a balance between generalized semantic and detailed episodic memories, which can prove very useful in, e.g., educational settings.

Neuroscience of Object Relations in Health and Disorder: A Proposal for an Integrative Model

“…Neurophysiological and epigenetic processes involving mPFC and hippocampus in schema-learning and selfreinforcing expansion have been described in animals (Tse et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2012). A similar pattern in humans, involving crosstalk 1 between the hippocampus and ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) has been established for schema-forming, self-reinforcing schema-expansion, and schema-alteration (van Kesteren et al, 2010(van Kesteren et al, , 2012(van Kesteren et al, , 2016van Kesteren and Meeter, 2020). The hippocampus forms an index of attending neocortical activities involved in encoding individual components of contextually reach memory and connects with amygdala-encoded contextual affects evoked by the episode (Tonegawa et al, 2018).…”

“…Psychoanalysis postulates that “all psychological experience, from the most fleeting fantasy to the most stable structure, is organized by object relations… the basic units of all experience” (Auchincloss and Samberg, 2012 , p.175) 17 . Cognitive-, cellular-, and systems-neuroscience of schematized episodic experience in humans (van Kesteren et al, 2016 ; van Kesteren and Meeter, 2020 ) and rodents (Tse et al, 2011 ; Wang et al, 2012 ) provide a potential mechanism for this theorizing. Schematic frameworks for survival- and safety-level experiences of infancy and toddlerhood appear to be formed and stored in the mPFC while the amygdala continues to provide input about contextual affect-memories (Kitamura et al, 2017 ), as discussed.…”

“…In contrast to preconceptual object relations, core beliefs emerge at more advanced stages of cognitive development, require self-referential cognition, and ability to form complex causal concepts. Based on modern neuroscience of schema-forming and schema-expansion in animals and humans (van Kesteren et al, 2010 , 2012 , 2016 ; Tse et al, 2011 ; Wang et al, 2012 ; van Kesteren and Meeter, 2020 ), under normal circumstances, schematized self- and object-constancy (the earliest self-related concepts extracted from integrated object relations) regulate own expansion into cognitively advanced positive self-valuations reflecting themes of self-sufficiency, lovability, and self-worth (adaptive core beliefs), and finally generalize into higher-order adaptive schemas that preferentially assimilate positive while discounting negative information. Each phase in such cognitive development likely involves processing in mPFC (Tse et al, 2011 ; Tonegawa et al, 2018 ), which seems to be the main hub for generalizing self-related knowledge based on past experience.…”

“…Based on research in animals (Tse et al, 2011 ) and humans (van Kesteren and Meeter, 2020 ), the inaugural schema-affect-encodings of early adversity are likely to thereafter implicitly promote preferential assimilation of perceived rejection, while positive experiences are assimilated as exceptions. As such, partial object relations interfere with normal self-organization of functional connectivity networks that underlie mental faculties, rendering thought, emotion, and motivation dichotomized, alternating between decompensated (e.g., anxieties about one's own ability and safety, paranoid interpretation of the environment, aggressive-destructive tendencies toward significant objects) and compensated (when fantasized self-imagery is sufficient to organize the mind while awareness of own vulnerability to rejection is only vaguely recognized) (Svrakic and Divac-Jovanovic, 2019 ).…”

“…Additionally, persistent environment of safety and acceptance may prime the hippocampus-amygdala-mPFC memory system to selectively process emotionally positive experiences via metaplasticity (Çalişkan and Stork, 2018 ). Such implicit emotional learning may not only disrupt chronic reconsolidation of endangerment and rejection, but also may re-construct (update) the net-negative schema of partial object relations toward a net-positive valence (van Kesteren and Meeter, 2020 ). As mPFC is a key hub in functional networks that underlie mental faculties, such selectivity toward safety and acceptance may become a stable attractor for the maturation of these networks “from within,” much like partial object relations interfered with normal brain/mind development during phase-sensitive periods of infancy and toddlerhood.…”