Neural Context Reinstatement of Recurring Events

Abstract

Episodic recollection involves retrieving context information bound to specific events. However, autobiographical memory largely comprises recurrent, similar experiences that become integrated into joint representations. In the current study, we extracted a neural signature of temporal context from scalp electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate whether recalling a recurring event accompanies the reinstatement of one or multiple instances of its occurrence. We asked 52 young adults to study and recall lists of words that included both once-presented and repeated items. Participants recalled repeated items in association with neighboring list items from each occurrence, but with stronger clustering around the repetition's initial occurrence. Furthermore, multivariate spectral EEG analyses revealed that neural activity from just prior to the recall of these words resembled patterns of activity observed near the item's first occurrence, but not its second. Together, these results suggest that the initial occurrence of an event carries stronger temporal context associations than later repetitions.