Periodic Reporting for period 5 - STREAM (The spatio-temporal representational architecture of memory)
Período documentado: 2022-02-01 hasta 2023-08-31
Over the duration of the project, we have found highly consistent evidence in support of such a reverse reconstruction hierarchy, including in brain activity patterns and in behaviour using feature-specific reaction times. While sensory information is primarily processed along a detailed-perceptual to abstract-conceptual gradient, we find that the elements contained in a memory are reconstructed along a reversed gradient that prioritizes abstract-conceptual over detailed-perceptual information. Also consistent with STREAM's original predictions, we show that memories become semanticised over time and with repeated recall, suggesting an important role for active memory reconstruction in shaping our long-term memories. Moreover, STREAM revealed that the neural reactivation of a memory during retrieval is clocked by brain oscillations in the theta rhythm, visible in neural activity and even in behaviour. Overall, STREAM succeeded in its original goal to decompose memories into constituent elements to address the question "what's in a memory, when in time?", allowing fundamental insights into the timeline of memory recall, and the features of visual memories that are preferentially reconstructed. Understanding how memories are reconstructed in the healthy human brain, step by step, constitutes a major leap in our knowledge and has important implications for clinical and other applied work, for example for understanding the over-generalization of memories in post-traumatic stress disorders, or common memory errors in eyewitness testimony.
Consistent with the original proposal, we also find that this memory reactivation is clocked by neural oscillations in the theta frequency range, and that these rhythmic fluctuations can be observed in the hippocampus (ter Wal et al., 2021; Kerren et al., 2018, 2022), and even in button press behaviours (Ter Wal et al., 2021). This includes work in epileptic patients using intracranial EEG (iEEG) to record signals directly from the human hippocampus (ter Wal et al., 2021), speaking directly as to the sources of these memory signatures. The methodological developments related to this objective also led to the publication of the “Brain Time Toolbox” (van Bree et al., 2022), a tool allowing researchers to link brain oscillations to the content that is decodable from EEG/MEG/iEEG recordings. We summarised our first milestone findings from STREAM in a highly-cited review paper about the timeline (“neural chronometry”) of memory recall (Staresina & Wimber, 2019). The data from several other experiments are still in the analysis or write-up stage, with first results having been presented at international conferences.