scholarly journals The Episodic Memory System: Neurocircuitry and Disorders

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradford C Dickerson ◽  
Howard Eichenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory System

An adaptive function of mental time travel: Motivating farsighted decisions

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Benoit ◽  
Ruud M. W. J. Berkers ◽  
Philipp C. Paulus
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
Central Function ◽  
Phenomenological Experience

AbstractThe episodic memory system allows us to experience the emotions of past, counterfactual, and prospective events. We outline how this phenomenological experience can convey motivational incentives for farsighted decisions. In this way, we challenge important arguments for Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) conclusion that future-oriented mental time travel is unlikely to be a central function of episodic memory.

Object, Space, and Object-Space Representations in the Primate Hippocampus

2005 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 833-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund T. Rolls ◽  
Jianzhong Xiang ◽  
Leonardo Franco
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Hippocampal Formation ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Important Advance ◽  
Object Space ◽  
Place Memory ◽  
Human Hippocampus ◽  
Spatial View

A fundamental question about the function of the primate including human hippocampus is whether object as well as allocentric spatial information is represented. Recordings were made from single hippocampal formation neurons while macaques performed an object-place memory task that required the monkeys to learn associations between objects and where they were shown in a room. Some neurons (10%) responded differently to different objects independently of location; other neurons (13%) responded to the spatial view independently of which object was present at the location; and some neurons (12%) responded to a combination of a particular object and the place where it was shown in the room. These results show that there are separate as well as combined representations of objects and their locations in space in the primate hippocampus. This is a property required in an episodic memory system, for which associations between objects and the places where they are seen are prototypical. The results thus provide an important advance by showing that a requirement for a human episodic memory system, separate and combined neuronal representations of objects and where they are seen “out there” in the environment, is present in the primate hippocampus.

scholarly journals Right Amygdalar and Temporofrontal Activation During Autobiographic, But Not During Fictitious Memory Retrieval

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 181-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Markowitsch ◽  
Alexander Thiel ◽  
Mechthild Reinkemeier ◽  
Josef Kessler ◽  
Adem Koyuncu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Affective Arousal ◽  
Significant Life ◽  
Uncinate Fascicle ◽  
The Right

What distinguishes the recall of real-life experiences from that of self-created, fictitious emotionally laden information? Both kinds of information belong to the episodic memory system. Autobiographic memories constitute that part of the episodic memory system that is composed of significant life episodes, primarily of the distant past. Functional imaging was used to study the neural networks engaged in retrieving autobiographic and fictitious information of closely similar content. The principally activated brain regions overlapped considerably and constituted temporal and inferior prefrontal regions plus the cerebellum. Selective activations of the right amygdala and the right ventral prefrontal cortex (at the level of the uncinate fascicle interconnnecting prefrontal and temporopolar areas) were found when subtracting fictitious from autobiographic retrieval. Furthermore, distinct foci in the left temporal lobe were engaged. These data demonstrate that autobiographic memory retrieval uses (at least in non-brain damaged individuals) a network of right hemispheric ventral prefrontal and temporopolar regions and left hemispheric lateral temporal regions. It is concluded that it is the experiential character, its special emotional infiltration and its arousal which distinguishes memory of real-life from that of fictitious episodes. Consequently, our results point to the engagement of a bi-hemispheric network in which the right temporo-prefrontal hemisphere is likely to be responsible for the affective/arousal side of information retrieval and the left-hemispheric temporal gyrus for its engram-like representation. Portions of the neural activation found during retrieval might, however, reflect re-encoding processes as well.

scholarly journals Episodic Control as Meta-Reinforcement Learning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Ritter ◽  
JX Wang ◽  
Z Kurth-Nelson ◽  
M Botvinick
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Learning Algorithms ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Generic Model ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Model Free

AbstractRecent research has placed episodic reinforcement learning (RL) alongside model-free and model-based RL on the list of processes centrally involved in human reward-based learning. In the present work, we extend the unified account of model-free and model-based RL developed by Wang et al. (2018) to further integrate episodic learning. In this account, a generic model-free “meta-learner” learns to deploy and coordinate among all of these learning algorithms. The meta-learner learns through brief encounters with many novel tasks, so that it learns to learn about new tasks. We show that when equipped with an episodic memory system inspired by theories of reinstatement and gating, the meta-learner learns to use the episodic and model-based learning algorithms observed in humans in a task designed to dissociate among the influences of various learning strategies. We discuss implications and predictions of the model.

scholarly journals Episodic Mindreading: Mentalizing Guided by Imagined and Remembered Scenes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Gaesser
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Body Language ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Mind Reading ◽  
Open Questions

Attributing mental states to other people fundamentally shapes how we bond, coordinate, and predict the actions of others. Perceiving a person’s facial expressions and body language contribute to our ability to understand what they are thinking and feeling. Yet, people do not exist in a vacuum and individuals often think about people who are not directly in front of them. People inhabit remembered and imagined episodes, where the surrounding location and objects can guide attributions of their mental states. In this article, I propose the episodic mind reading hypothesis, arguing that the episodic representation in which a target person is embedded will affect whether and how the target’s mind is read. The content and phenomenological quality of imagined and remembered episodes can alter what mental states are attributed to a target and the accessibility of those mental states. This hypothesis encourages researchers to think about mentalizing as neither dependent on nor completely exclusive from the episodic memory system. Instead, the episodic memory system can modulate and inform mind reading, and likely vice versa. The article reviews extant knowledge and highlights open questions for future research to explore with implications for healthy and impaired social cognition.

A unique role for the hippocampus in recollecting the past and remembering the future

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-320
Author(s):  
Valerie A. Carr ◽  
Indre V. Viskontas
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Brain Region ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Future Event ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Episodic Memories

AbstractSuddendorf & Corballis (S&C) argue that episodic memory is the most flexible and recently evolved memory system, and point to the reorganization of prefrontal cortex throughout human evolution as the neuroanatomical substrate. Their approach, however, fails to address the unique role that the hippocampus, a primitive brain region, plays in creating and recalling episodic memories, as well as future event construction.

Cerebral Activations During Repeated Encoding and Subsequent Recognition: The Effect of Task on the Episodic Memory System

NeuroImage ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. S53
Author(s):  
DG McLaren ◽  
G Xu ◽  
ML Ries ◽  
EK Kastman ◽  
SC Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory System

The influence of melodic and rhythmic redundancies on recognition memory for unknown musical themes

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Nardo ◽  
Riccardo Brunetti ◽  
Enrico Cupellini ◽  
Marta Olivetti Belardinelli
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Study List ◽  
Test List ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Differential Effectiveness ◽  
Tonal Stimuli ◽  
K Response

The aim of this study was to assess the influence of melodic and rhythmic redundancies, and their interaction with tonality, on recognition memory for music. Forty-four non-musicians performed a recognition task with unknown musical material. Stimuli created for experimental purposes were made up of 48 short melodies (half tonal and half non-tonal) and were characterized by the presence of three kinds of musical redundancy: melodic only, rhythmic only, or both melodicrhythmic. In a first phase, subjects listened to a study list of 24 stimuli. After 20 minutes, a test list containing 48 stimuli (24 previously heard and 24 novel ones) was administered, and subjects were asked to indicate for each item whether the melody: was recognized from the study list (R response); evoked a sense of familiarity (K response); or was not recognized at all (X response). Major results showed that tonality influences semantic, but not episodic memory, and that the two systems are differentially affected by the type of redundancy (especially melodic-rhythmic, which has a large effect on episodic memory but is ineffective for semantic memory). Moreover, tonality and the type of redundancy systematically interact only in the episodic memory system. Thus, evidence supports disassociation of the two memory systems. Furthermore, R and X responses showed a symmetry in their trend, suggesting a role for X responses as counterparts of the R responses within the episodic memory system. Melodic-rhythmic redundancy demonstrated the most prominent effects on the episodic system, whereas the assessment comparing melodic versus rhythmic only as the pre-eminent type of redundancy was more ambiguous. Finally, non-tonal stimuli were found to be more sensitive than tonal stimuli, whereby they showed differential effectiveness regarding redundancy type, a result which suggests that they could prove serviceable in future studies concerning recognition memory for music.

scholarly journals Episodic–like memory in animals: psychological criteria, neural mechanisms and the value of episodic–like tasks to investigate animal models of neurodegenerative disease

2001 ◽  
Vol 356 (1413) ◽  
pp. 1453-1465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. M. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Neurodegenerative Disease ◽  
Hippocampal Formation ◽  
Amyloid Plaque ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Memory Representation ◽  
Learning Tasks ◽  
The World ◽  
Synaptic Change ◽  
Activity Dependent

The question of whether any non–human species displays episodic memory is controversial. Associative accounts of animal learning recognize that behaviour can change in response to single events but this does not imply that animals need or are later able to recall representations of unique events at a different time and place. The lack of language is also relevant, being the usual medium for communicating about the world, but whether it is critical for the capacity to represent and recall events is a separate matter. One reason for suspecting that certain animals possess an episodic–like memory system is that a variety of learning and memory tasks have been developed that, even though they do not meet the strict criteria required for episodic memory, have an ‘episodic–like’ character. These include certain one–trial learning tasks, scene–specific discrimination learning, multiple reversal learning, delayed matching and non–matching tasks and, most recently, tasks demanding recollection of ‘what, where and when’ an event happened. Another reason is that the neuronal architecture of brain areas thought to be involved in episodic memory (including the hippocampal formation) are substantially similar in mammals and, arguably, all vertebrates. Third, our developing understanding of activity–dependent synaptic plasticity (which is a candidate neuronal mechanism for encoding memory traces) suggests that its expression reflects certain physiological characteristics that are ideal components of a neuronal episodic memory system. These include the apparently digital character of synaptic change at individual terminals and the variable persistence of potentiation accounted for by the synaptic tag hypothesis. A further value of studying episodic–like memory in animals is the opportunity it affords to model certain kinds of neurodegenerative disease that, in humans, affect episodic memory. An example is recent work on a transgenic mouse that over–expresses a mutation of human amyloid precursor protein (APP) that occurs in familial Alzheimer's disease, under the control of platelet derived (PD) growth factor promoter (the PDAPP mouse). A striking age– and amyloid plaque–related deficit is seen using a task in which the mice have to keep changing their memory representation of the world rather than learn a single fact.

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