Measuring Memory Reactivation With Functional MRI: Implications for Psychological Theory - PubMed (original) (raw)

Measuring Memory Reactivation With Functional MRI: Implications for Psychological Theory

Benjamin J Levy et al. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2013 Jan.

Abstract

Environmental cues often remind us of earlier experiences by triggering the reactivation of memories of events past. Recent evidence suggests that memory reactivation can be observed using functional MRI and that distributed pattern analyses can even provide evidence of reactivation on individual trials. The ability to measure memory reactivation offers unique and powerful leverage on theoretical issues of long-standing interest in cognitive psychology, providing a means to address questions that have proven difficult to answer with behavioral data alone. In this article, we consider three instances. First, reactivation measures can indicate whether memory-based inferences (i.e., generalization) arise through the encoding of integrated cross-event representations or through the flexible expression of separable event memories. Second, online measures of memory reactivation may inform theories of forgetting by providing information about when competing memories are reactivated during competitive retrieval situations. Finally, neural reactivation may provide a window onto the role of replay in memory consolidation. The ability to track memory reactivation, including at the individual trial level, provides unique leverage that is not afforded by behavioral measures and thus promises to shed light on such varied topics as generalization, integration, forgetting, and consolidation.

Keywords: declarative memory; episodic memory; fMRI; relational memory.

© The Author(s) 2013.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Evidence for integrative encoding from Shohamy and Wagner (2008). (A) Behavioral paradigm for the acquired equivalence task. Participants learned face-scene associations through trial-and-error feedback (upper left). Critically, during the learning phase some cues shared a common associate (lower left). During a subsequent test (upper right), participants were tested on the trained pairs and on generalization trials. Generalization trials could be correctly responded to by way of two different mechanisms (lower right): during test, participants may retrieve multiple distinct trained associations and draw inferences from them about what response should be made; alternatively, during learning, prior associations may be reactivated and then integrated into a single cross-event representation that is then available to be retrieved when the generalization trials are encountered at test. (B) Neuroimaging evidence for integrative encoding. Activity in the right and left hippocampus (top) increased across the learning phase. Across participants, the degree to which activation increased from early to late learning was predictive of performance (% correct) on the generalization trials (middle). A median split of the participants revealed that the “good” generalizers showed increased activity from the early to late learning phase, whereas “poor” generalizers did not (bottom).

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