Autobiographical memory, time and environmental navigation: unveiling the cognitive map of our past through an integrated neuropsychological perspective

Projektinformationen

ATENA

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101039206

DOI

10.3030/101039206

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 31 März 2022

Startdatum 1 September 2022

Enddatum 31 August 2028

Finanziert unter

• European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 1 499 718,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 1 499 718,00

Koordiniert durch

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ATENA (Autobiographical memory, time and environmental navigation: unveiling the cognitive map of our past through an integrated neuropsychological perspective)

Berichtszeitraum: 2022-09-01 bis 2025-02-28

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

Episodic autobiographical memory refers to the ability to recollect and re-experience events of our own life that occurred at a particular time and place. It allows for the development and maintenance of our unique personal identity and self-awareness, namely autonoetic consciousness. An integrated and comprehensive model of how and where episodic autobiographical memories are stored in the human brain is still lacking. The core hypothesis of ATENA is that previous experiences are spatially organized into a cognitive map and that temporal coding indexes the content of such a map. Also, a dynamic re-mapping should occur in the brain, as time passes after the event. Recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive neuroscience make the study of episodic autobiographical memory timely. ATENA will integrate cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging approaches to demonstrate that retrieving autobiographical memories crucially relies on spatial and temporal processing. In brief, advanced information-based approaches to neuroimaging (i.e. representation similarity analysis and decoding) will be adopted to directly test the neural representation underlying episodic autobiographical memory and its possible dynamic re-mapping across time. A lifespan developmental study will be designed to test the ontogeny of place and time contribution to episodic autobiographical memory. Finally, the contribution of the alterations in time and place coding in different developmental and acquired neuropsychological conditions characterized by a deficit in episodic autobiographical memory will be tested. Besides a novel integrated neuroscientific account of episodic autobiographical memory and its development across the lifespan, ATENA will open new areas of investigation in the field of the human mind and its complexity and will inspire new approaches for neuropsychological rehabilitation of memory deficits.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

A webpage has been developed https://www.memorytimespacelab.com/atena-project.html

Studies have been preregistered on osf at the following links
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/NWD2X
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UX4WM
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/VAQFS
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ETU9W
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5CG76
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/P4F98
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GAQ5M

In a first study, we described the brain network involved in the mental projection of the self through episodic autobiographical memories. A first draft of the manuscript has been written. We have also collected neuroimaging data on the re-experiencing of episodic autobiographical memories, which will be used for multivariate pattern analysis to reveal the organization of autobiographical memories as a function of time. We have completed the first time point of the longitudinal study, which aims to test the neural representation underlying episodic autobiographical memory and its possible dynamic remapping over time. We are currently recruiting children and adolescents to test the ontogeny of the contribution of place and time to episodic autobiographical memory. We are also recruiting participants with developmental and acquired neuropsychological conditions characterized by a deficit in episodic autobiographical memory to test the contribution of time and place coding to the memory deficit. In particular, eight individuals presented to our laboratory with a lifelong autobiographical memory deficit. Considering the paucity of case reports, this is a major achievement and suggests an increased interest in neuropsychology and largely unknown developmental deficits such as Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The results of our first functional magnetic resonance imaging study provide new insights into how personal events are temporally organized in the human brain. In brief, we found that a distributed network of brain regions (i.e. occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal, and subcortical regions) is involved in mental projection across the past and future. Interestingly, we observed that most of these regions exhibited neural modulation as a function of life span and/or as a function of compatibility with a back-to-front mental timeline, suggesting a key role for these regions in representing the temporal organization of personal events. Furthermore, the closer the personal events, the stronger the functional coupling between regions of the parietotemporal network and the visual cortex and hippocampus. Revealing the neural underpinnings of mental travel across past and future autobiographical events as a function of temporal reference and distance will significantly advance the field of neuropsychology of memory. Although several studies have investigated neuropsychological aspects of episodic autobiographical memory and episodic future thinking, little was known about the fine-grained spatiotemporal dynamics of mental travel prior to our study. Our results reveal a network of brain areas involved in mental projection across the past and future. These results would inform new investigations aimed at testing the causal contribution of these brain areas to the human ability to place oneself in the past and in the future.
As a corollary aspect of the project, we provided new evidence about validity and reliability of the autobiographical fluency test to be used in both clinical and experimental contexts to test autobiographical memory. This test taps both episodic and experience-near personal semantics. The neural networks underlying these components were also described.

Brain regions involved in mental travel across personal and public events