What can narratives tell us about the neural bases of human memory?

Lee, Hongmi; Bellana, Buddhika; Chen, Janice

doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.02.007

Cited by 48 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Our results suggest that process memory may have two states: a state in which prior events are active and influence ongoing information processing and an inactive state in which the latent memory does not interfere with the ongoing neural dynamics (Hasson et al, 2015;Stokes, 2015). Through crossdisciplinary collaboration, this study demonstrated a way to achieve some experimental control over naturalistic stimuli, which play an ever-increasing role in revealing how the human brain works in its native environment (Lee, Bellana, & Chen, 2020;Willems, Nastase, & Milivojevic, 2020;Sonkusare, Breakspear, & Guo, 2019), and also showed how skilled storytellers leverage these mechanisms of separation and integration to bring about the desired effects in the listener's brain. Comparison between the within-participant RSA and between-participant RSA of the storyline effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Relating the Past with the Present: Information Integration and Segregation during Ongoing Narrative Processing

Chang

Lazaridi

Yeshurun

et al. 2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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This study examined how the brain dynamically updates event representations by integrating new information over multiple minutes while segregating irrelevant input. A professional writer custom-designed a narrative with two independent storylines, interleaving across minute-long segments (ABAB). In the last (C) part, characters from the two storylines meet and their shared history is revealed. Part C is designed to induce the spontaneous recall of past events, upon the recurrence of narrative motifs from A/B, and to shed new light on them. Our fMRI results showed storyline-specific neural patterns, which were reinstated (i.e., became more active) during storyline transitions. This effect increased along the processing timescale hierarchy, peaking in the default mode network. Similarly, the neural reinstatement of motifs was found during Part C. Furthermore, participants showing stronger motif reinstatement performed better in integrating A/B and C events, demonstrating the role of memory reactivation in information integration over intervening irrelevant events.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Relating the Past with the Present: Information Integration and Segregation during Ongoing Narrative Processing

Chang

Lazaridi

Yeshurun

et al. 2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…If associative regions are still developing, infant event segmentation may be sensory-driven. However, ISC and event structure in infants was not limited to visual regions, extending into regions linked to narrative processing in adults (Lee et al, 2020). Furthermore, infants structured events over a longer timescale, consistent with their ability to represent more extended, complex content.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural event segmentation of continuous experience in human infants

Skalaban

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Although sensory input is continuous, we perceive and remember discrete events. Event segmentation has been studied extensively in adults, but little is known about how the youngest minds experience the world. The main impediment to studying event segmentation in infants has been a reliance on explicit parsing tasks that are not possible at this age. fMRI has recently proven successful at measuring adult event segmentation during task-free, naturalistic perception. Applied to infants, this could reveal the nature of their event segmentation, from low-level sensory transients to high-level cognitive boundaries. We collected fMRI data from 25 adults and 25 infants less than one year of age watching the same short movie. Neural events were defined by the stability of voxel activity patterns. In adults, we replicated a hierarchical gradient of event timescales, from shorter events in early visual regions to longer events in later visual and narrative regions. In infants, however, longer events were found throughout the brain, including in a second dataset. Infant event structure fit adult data and vice versa, but adult behavioral boundaries were differently expressed in adult and infant brains. These findings have implications for the nature of infant experience and cognition.

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“…Despite potential difficulties in completely separating episodic and semantic retrieval effects, future experiments based on paradigms similar to that described here appear to hold great promise. One could, for example, scan participants both while they view (encode) and later recall film clips to better understand the specificity of the effects observed in the current report (for related discussion, see Lee et al 2020). Overt speech and verbal content scoring can also be applied to study cognitive phenomena beyond episodic memory.…”

Section: On the Separation Of Semantic And Episodic Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Content Reactivation Supports Naturalistic Autobiographical Recall in Humans

et al. 2020

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Humans can vividly recall and re-experience events from their past, and these are commonly referred to as episodic or autobiographical memories. fMRI experiments reliably associate autobiographical event recall with activity in a network of “default” or “core” brain regions. However, as prior studies have relied on covert (silent) recall procedures, current understanding may be hampered by methodological limitations that obscure dynamic effects supporting moment-to-moment content retrieval. Here, fMRI participants (N= 40) overtly (verbally) recalled memories for ∼2 min periods. The content of spoken descriptions was categorized using a variant of the Autobiographical Interview (AI) procedure (Levine et al., 2002) and temporally re-aligned with BOLD data so activity accompanying the recall of different details could be measured. Replicating prior work, sustained effects associated with autobiographical recall periods (which are insensitive to the moment-to-moment content of retrieval) fell primarily within canonical default network regions. Spoken descriptions were rich in episodic details, frequently focusing on physical entities, their ongoing activities, and their appearances. Critically, neural activity associated with recalling specific details (e.g., those related to people or places) was transient, broadly distributed, and grounded in category-selective cortex (e.g., regions related to social cognition or scene processing). Thus, although a single network may generally support the process of vivid event reconstruction, the structures required to provide detail-related information shift in a predictable manner that respects domain-level representations across the cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTHumans can vividly recall memories of autobiographical episodes, a process thought to involve the reconstruction of numerous distinct event details. Yet how the brain represents a complex episode as it unfolds over time remains unclear and appears inconsistent across experimental traditions. One hurdle is the use of covert (silent) in-scanner recall to study autobiographical memory, which prevents experimenter knowledge of what information is being retrieved, and when, throughout the remembering process. In this experiment, participants overtly described autobiographical memories while undergoing fMRI. Activity associated with the recall and description of specific details was transient, broadly distributed, and grounded in category-selective cortex. Thus, it appears that as events unfold mentally, structures are dynamically reactivated to support vivid recollection.

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What can narratives tell us about the neural bases of human memory?

Cited by 48 publications

References 70 publications

Relating the Past with the Present: Information Integration and Segregation during Ongoing Narrative Processing

Relating the Past with the Present: Information Integration and Segregation during Ongoing Narrative Processing

Neural event segmentation of continuous experience in human infants

Dynamic Content Reactivation Supports Naturalistic Autobiographical Recall in Humans

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