FOR 2812: Constructing Scenarios of the Past: A New Framework in Episodic Memory

Basic data for this project

Description

Episodic memory is the memory of a particular personally experienced event. It plays an important role in many diverse situations, for instance, in paradigms as disparate as learning a list of items and the autobiographical memory interview. We view these two paradigms as two extremes in the spectrum of experimental paradigms for studying episodic memory. In this research unit, we will focus on paradigms that lie in the middle of that spectrum and that have received far less attention. These cases are highly relevant in our everyday experience and invoke complex retrieval processes, which go well beyond traditional hetero- and auto-associative memory models. For instance, on your drive to work, you try to remember whether you have switched off the coffee maker at home by replaying in your mind the sequence of actions you performed while making breakfast. Or you try to recall the arguments on both sides of a heated dispute with your friend to assess whether you were responsible for, or contributed to, the escalation. In cases such as these, we propose, the desired information may not have been explicitly stored in memory or may not be directly accessible. Instead, the target information is extracted from scenarios that are constructed during memory recall. Scenarios are mental simulations of a past episode, which are extended in space and/or time. The basis for scenario construction are episodic memory traces, which store the episodic gist of a specific episode, and semantic information, which represent statistical regularities in the world. Scenario construction provides flexibility to deal with missing data (generativity) and to adjust to variable demands and constraints, e.g. imposed by the self- model and social concerns. The objective of this research unit is to develop a theory of episodic memory based on scenarios. This requires addressing fundamental questions about scenarios. What are scenarios? How is scenario construction used to retrieve information? What are the central features of episodic memory that can be explained by scenario construction during recall? What are the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying scenario construction? How is scenario construction modulated/ influenced by internal and external factors, in particular the self and social interactions? What are the functions of scenario construction? This research unit will develop a new class of experimental paradigms that require scenario construction, and study its behavioral effects and the underlying neural mechanisms in experiments and computational models. Furthermore, we will develop an interdisciplinary framework of scenario construction, and study its theoretical implications.