scholarly journals Mnemonic prediction errors promote detailed memories

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 422-434
Author(s):  
Oded Bein ◽  
Natalie A. Plotkin ◽  
Lila Davachi
Keyword(s):  
Memory Trace ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Item Memory ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Memory Enhancement ◽  
Object A ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Memory Advantage ◽  
Violated Expectations

When our experience violates our predictions, it is adaptive to update our knowledge to promote a more accurate representation of the world and facilitate future predictions. Theoretical models propose that these mnemonic prediction errors should be encoded into a distinct memory trace to prevent interference with previous, conflicting memories. We investigated this proposal by repeatedly exposing participants to pairs of sequentially presented objects (A → B), thus evoking expectations. Then, we violated participants’ expectations by replacing the second object in the pairs with a novel object (A → C). The following item memory test required participants to discriminate between identical old items and similar lures, thus testing detailed and distinctive item memory representations. In two experiments, mnemonic prediction errors enhanced item memory: Participants correctly identified more old items as old when those items violated expectations during learning, compared with items that did not violate expectations. This memory enhancement for C items was only observed when participants later showed intact memory for the related A → B pairs, suggesting that strong predictions are required to facilitate memory for violations. Following up on this, a third experiment reduced prediction strength prior to violation and subsequently eliminated the memory advantage of violations. Interestingly, mnemonic prediction errors did not increase gist-based mistakes of identifying old items as similar lures or identifying similar lures as old. Enhanced item memory in the absence of gist-based mistakes suggests that violations enhanced memory for items’ details, which could be mediated via distinct memory traces. Together, these results advance our knowledge of how mnemonic prediction errors promote memory formation.

scholarly journals Mnemonic prediction errors promote detailed memories

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oded Bein ◽  
Natalie A. Plotkin ◽  
Lila Davachi
Keyword(s):  
Memory Trace ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Item Memory ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Memory Enhancement ◽  
Object A ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Memory Advantage ◽  
Violated Expectations

When our experience violates our predictions, it is adaptive to update our knowledge to promote a more accurate representation of the world and facilitate future predictions. Theoretical models propose that these mnemonic prediction errors should be encoded into a distinct memory trace to prevent interference with previous, conflicting memories. We investigated this proposal by repeatedly exposing participants to pairs of sequentially presented objects (A->B), thus evoking expectations. Then, we violated participants’ expectations by replacing the second object in the pairs with a novel object (A->C). The following item memory test required participants to discriminate between identical old items and similar lures, thus testing detailed and distinctive item memory representations. In two experiments, mnemonic prediction errors enhanced item memory: participants correctly identified more old items as old when those items violated expectations during learning, compared to items that did not violate expectations. This memory enhancement for C items was only observed when participants later showed intact memory for the related A->B pairs, suggesting that strong predictions are required to facilitate memory for violations. Following up on this, a third experiment reduced prediction strength prior to violation and subsequently eliminated the memory advantage of violations. Interestingly, mnemonic prediction errors did not increase gist-based mistakes of identifying old items as similar lures or identifying similar lures as ‘old’. Enhanced item memory in the absence of gist-based mistakes suggests that violations enhanced memory for items’ details, which could be mediated via distinct memory traces. Together, these results advance our knowledge of how mnemonic prediction errors promote memory formation

Positive Arousal Enhances the Consolidation of Item Memory

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Wang
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory Consolidation ◽  
Source Memory ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Memory Test ◽  
Learning Phase ◽  
Item Memory ◽  
Memory Tests ◽  
Immediate Memory

Emotional arousal induced after learning has been shown to modulate memory consolidation. However, it is unclear whether the effect of postlearning arousal can extend to different aspects of memory. This study examined the effect of postlearning positive arousal on both item memory and source memory. Participants learned a list of neutral words and took an immediate memory test. Then they watched a positive or a neutral videoclip and took delayed memory tests after either 25 minutes or 1 week had elapsed after the learning phase. In both delay conditions, positive arousal enhanced consolidation of item memory as measured by overall recognition. Furthermore, positive arousal enhanced consolidation of familiarity but not recollection. However, positive arousal appeared to have no effect on consolidation of source memory. These findings have implications for building theoretical models of the effect of emotional arousal on consolidation of episodic memory and for applying postlearning emotional arousal as a technique of memory intervention.

Social group membership and an incidental ingroup-memory advantage

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-178
Author(s):  
Youngbin A Jeon ◽  
Alexis M Banquer ◽  
Anaya S Navangul ◽  
Kyungmi Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
The Self ◽  
Task Demand ◽  
Memory Enhancement ◽  
Memory Suppression ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Memory Advantage ◽  
Self Reference

Extending the self-reference effect in memory to the level of social identity, previous research showed that processing information in reference to one’s ingroup at encoding enhances memory for the information (i.e., the group-reference effect). Notably, recent work on the self-reference effect has shown that even simply co-presenting an item with self-relevant vs. other-relevant information (e.g., one’s own or another person’s name) at encoding can produce an “incidental” self-memory advantage in the absence of any task demand to evaluate the item’s self-relevancy. In three experiments, the present study examined whether this incidental self-memory advantage extends to the level of social identity using newly created, minimal groups (Experiments 1 and 2) and pre-existing groups (Experiment 3; one’s own or another study major). During encoding, participants judged the location of each target word in relation to a simultaneously presented cue (Ingroup-cue or Outgroup-cue in Experiments 1 and 3; Ingroup-cue, Outgroup-cue, or Neutral-cue in Experiment 2). Consistent across all experiments, a subsequent recognition test revealed a significant memory advantage for words that were presented with the Ingroup-cue. Crucially, this incidental ingroup-memory advantage was driven by ingroup-memory enhancement rather than outgroup-memory suppression relative to memory for words presented with the Neutral-cue (Experiment 2), and was positively correlated with self-reported levels of ingroup identification (i.e., self-investment to one’s ingroup; Experiment 3). Taken together, the present findings provide novel evidence that mere incidental associations between one’s ingroup and to-be-remembered items in a non-referential, non-evaluative encoding context can produce a memory advantage for the items.

scholarly journals Tracking induced forgetting across both strong and weak memory representations to test competing theories of forgetting

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashleigh M. Maxcey ◽  
Zara Joykutty ◽  
Emma Megla
Keyword(s):  
Memory Trace ◽  
Memory Representation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moderate Amount ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Inhibitory Mechanisms ◽  
Memory Probe ◽  
Global Matching ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Induced Forgetting

AbstractHere we employ a novel analysis to address the question: what causes induced forgetting of pictures? We use baseline memorability as a measure of initial memory strength to ask whether induced forgetting is due to (1) recognition practice damaging the association between the memory representation and the category cue used to activate the representation, (2) the updating of a memory trace by incorporating information about a memory probe presented during recognition practice to the stored trace, (3) inhibitory mechanisms used to resolve the conflict created when correctly selecting the practiced item activates competing exemplars, (4) a global matching model in which repeating some items will hurt memory for other items, or (5) falling into the zone of destruction, where a moderate amount of activation leads to the highest degree of forgetting. None of the accounts of forgetting tested here can comprehensively account for both the novel analyses reported here and previous data using the induced forgetting paradigm. We discuss aspects of forgetting theories that are consistent with the novel analyses and existing data, a potential solution for existing models, proposals for future directions, and considerations when incorporating memorability into models of memory.

scholarly journals Lateral entorhinal cortex suppresses drift in cortical memory representations.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryna Pilkiw ◽  
Justin Jarovi ◽  
Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi
Keyword(s):  
Entorhinal Cortex ◽  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
Firing Pattern ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Male Rats ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Familiar Environment ◽  
Functional Relevance ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Cortical Representations

Memory retrieval is thought to depend on the reinstatement of cortical memory representations guided by pattern completion processes in the hippocampus. The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) is one of the intermediary regions supporting hippocampal-cortical interactions and houses neurons that prospectively signal past events in a familiar environment. To investigate the functional relevance of the LEC's activity for cortical reinstatement, we pharmacologically inhibited the LEC and examined its impact on the stability of ensemble firing patterns in one of the LEC's efferent targets, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). When male rats underwent multiple epochs of identical stimulus sequences in the same environment, the mPFC maintained a stable ensemble firing pattern across repetitions, particularly when the sequence included pairings of neutral and aversive stimuli. With LEC inhibition, the mPFC still formed an ensemble pattern that accurately captured stimuli and their associations within each epoch. However, LEC inhibition markedly disrupted its consistency across the epochs by decreasing the proportion of mPFC neurons that stably maintained firing selectivity for stimulus associations. Thus, the LEC stabilizes cortical representations of learned stimulus associations, thereby facilitating the recovery of the original memory trace without generating a new, redundant trace for familiar experiences. Failure of this process might underlie retrieval deficits in conditions associated with degeneration of the LEC, such as normal aging and Alzheimer's disease.

scholarly journals Controlling Conflict from Interfering Long-term Memory Representations

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1173-1190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Jost ◽  
Patrick H. Khader ◽  
Peter Düsel ◽  
Franziska R. Richter ◽  
Kristina B. Rohde ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Retrieval Cues ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Specific Memory ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Retrieval Interference ◽  
Relevant Material

Remembering is more than an activation of a memory trace. As retrieval cues are often not uniquely related to one specific memory, cognitive control should come into play to guide selective memory retrieval by focusing on relevant while ignoring irrelevant information. Here, we investigated, by means of EEG and fMRI, how the memory system deals with retrieval interference arising when retrieval cues are associated with two material types (faces and spatial positions), but only one is task-relevant. The topography of slow EEG potentials and the fMRI BOLD signal in posterior storage areas indicated that in such situations not only the relevant but also the irrelevant material becomes activated. This results in retrieval interference that triggers control processes mediated by the medial and lateral PFC, which are presumably involved in biasing target representations by boosting the task-relevant material. Moreover, memory-based conflict was found to be dissociable from response conflict that arises when the relevant and irrelevant materials imply different responses. The two types of conflict show different activations in the medial frontal cortex, supporting the claim of domain-specific prefrontal control systems.

Recovered consciousness: A proposal for making consciousness integral to neuropsychological theories of memory in humans and nonhumans

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 768-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris Moscovitch
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
System A ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Hippocampal Complex

AbstractWhy is consciousness associated with recovery of memories that are initially dependent on the hippocampal system? A hypothesis is proposed that the medial temporal lobe/hippocampal complex (MTL/H) receives as its input only information that is consciously apprehended. By a process termed “cohesion,” the MTL/H binds into a memory trace those neural elements that mediated the conscious experience so that effectively, “consciousness” is an integral part of the memory trace. It is the phenomenological records of events (Conway 1992), integrated consciousness-content packets, that are recovered when memory traces are retrieved.

scholarly journals Dopamine, Prediction Error and Beyond

2020 ◽  
pp. 107385842090759
Author(s):  
Kelly M. J. Diederen ◽  
Paul C. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Optimal Choice ◽  
Reward Processing ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Mental Pathology

A large body of work has linked dopaminergic signaling to learning and reward processing. It stresses the role of dopamine in reward prediction error signaling, a key neural signal that allows us to learn from past experiences, and that facilitates optimal choice behavior. Latterly, it has become clear that dopamine does not merely code prediction error size but also signals the difference between the expected value of rewards, and the value of rewards actually received, which is obtained through the integration of reward attributes such as the type, amount, probability and delay. More recent work has posited a role of dopamine in learning beyond rewards. These theories suggest that dopamine codes absolute or unsigned prediction errors, playing a key role in how the brain models associative regularities within its environment, while incorporating critical information about the reliability of those regularities. Work is emerging supporting this perspective and, it has inspired theoretical models of how certain forms of mental pathology may emerge in relation to dopamine function. Such pathology is frequently related to disturbed inferences leading to altered internal models of the environment. Thus, it is critical to understand the role of dopamine in error-related learning and inference.

Word Imageability Enhances Association-memory by Increasing Hippocampal Engagement

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1522-1538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy B. Caplan ◽  
Christopher R. Madan
Keyword(s):  
Memory Function ◽  
Cued Recall ◽  
Item Memory ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Association Memory ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
Memory Advantage ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Associative Function

The hippocampus is thought to support association-memory, particularly when tested with cued recall. One of the most well-known and studied factors that influences accuracy of verbal association-memory is imageability; participants remember pairs of high-imageability words better than pairs of low-imageability words. High-imageability words are also remembered better in tests of item-memory. However, we previously found that item-memory effects could not explain the enhancement in cued recall, suggesting that imageability enhances association-memory strength. Here we report an fMRI study designed to ask, what is the role of the hippocampus in the memory advantage for associations due to imageability? We tested two alternative hypotheses: (1) Recruitment Hypothesis: High-imageability pairs are remembered better because they recruit the underlying hippocampal association-memory function more effectively. Alternatively, (2) Bypassing Hypothesis: Imageability functions by making the association-forming process easier, enhancing memory in a way that bypasses the hippocampus, as has been found, for example, with explicit unitization imagery strategies. Results found, first, hippocampal BOLD signal was greater during study and recall of high- than low-imageability word pairs. Second, the difference in activity between recalled and forgotten pairs showed a main effect, but no significant interaction with imageability, challenging the bypassing hypothesis, but consistent with the predictions derived from the recruitment hypothesis. Our findings suggest that certain stimulus properties, like imageability, may leverage, rather than avoid, the associative function of the hippocampus to support superior association-memory.

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