Medial Temporal Lobe Damage Impairs Temporal Integration in Episodic Memory.

Although the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and the hippocampus in episodic memory is well established, there is emerging evidence that these regions play a broader role in cognition, specifically in temporal processing. However, despite strong evidence that the hippocampus plays a critical role in sequential processing, the involvement of the MTL in timing per se is poorly understood. In the present study, we investigated whether patients with MTL damage exhibit differential performance on a temporal distance memory task.

Event representation at the scale of ordinary experience.

Weeks are divided into weekdays and weekends; years into semesters and seasons; lives into stages like childhood, adulthood, and adolescence. How does the structure of experience shape memory? Though much work has examined event representation in human cognition, little work has explored event representation at the scale of ordinary experience. Here, we use shared experiences - in the form of popular television shows - to explore how memories are shaped by event structure at a large scale.

Acute Stress Effects on Statistical Learning and Episodic Memory.

Stress is widely considered to negatively impact hippocampal function, thus impairing episodic memory. However, the hippocampus is not merely the seat of episodic memory. Rather, it also (via distinct circuitry) supports statistical learning.

Statistical learning in epilepsy: Behavioral and anatomical mechanisms in the human brain.

Objective: Statistical learning, the fundamental cognitive ability of humans to extract regularities across experiences over time, engages the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in the healthy brain. This leads to the hypothesis that statistical learning (SL) may be impaired in patients with epilepsy (PWE) involving the temporal lobe, and that this impairment could contribute to their varied memory deficits. In turn, studies done in collaboration with PWE, that evaluate the necessity of MTL circuitry through disease and causal perturbations, provide an opportunity to advance basic understanding of SL.

Hippocampal Mechanisms Support Cortisol-Induced Memory Enhancements.

Stress can powerfully influence episodic memory, often enhancing memory encoding for emotionally salient information. These stress-induced memory enhancements stand at odds with demonstrations that stress and the stress-related hormone cortisol can negatively affect the hippocampus, a brain region important for episodic memory encoding. To resolve this apparent conflict and determine whether and how the hippocampus supports memory encoding under cortisol, we combined behavioral assays of associative memory, high-resolution fMRI, and pharmacological manipulation of cortisol in a within-participant, double-blinded procedure (in both sexes).

More than a moment: What does it mean to call something an 'event'?

Experiences are stored in the mind as discrete mental units, or 'events,' which influence-and are influenced by-attention, learning, and memory. In this way, the notion of an 'event' is foundational to cognitive science. However, despite tremendous progress in understanding the behavioral and neural signatures of events, there is no agreed-upon definition of an event.

Multiple Memory Subsystems: Reconsidering Memory in the Mind and Brain.

The multiple-memory-systems framework-that distinct types of memory are supported by distinct brain systems-has guided learning and memory research for decades. However, recent work challenges the one-to-one mapping between brain structures and memory types central to this taxonomy, with key memory-related structures supporting multiple functions across substructures. Here we integrate cross-species findings in the hippocampus, striatum, and amygdala to propose an updated framework of multiple memory subsystems (MMSS).

Intracranial Entrainment Reveals Statistical Learning across Levels of Abstraction.

We encounter the same people, places, and objects in predictable sequences and configurations. Humans efficiently learn these regularities via statistical learning. Importantly, statistical learning creates knowledge not only of specific regularities but also of regularities that apply more generally across related experiences (i.

Statistical learning in epilepsy: Behavioral, anatomical, and causal mechanisms in the human brain.

Statistical learning, the fundamental cognitive ability of humans to extract regularities across experiences over time, engages the medial temporal lobe in the healthy brain. This leads to the hypothesis that statistical learning may be impaired in epilepsy patients, and that this impairment could contribute to their varied memory deficits. In turn, epilepsy patients provide a platform to advance basic understanding of statistical learning by helping to evaluate the necessity of medial temporal lobe circuitry through disease and causal perturbations.

Hippocampal mechanisms support cortisol-induced memory enhancements.

Stress can powerfully influence episodic memory, often enhancing memory encoding for emotionally salient information. These stress-induced memory enhancements stand at odds with demonstrations that stress and the stress-related hormone cortisol can negatively affect the hippocampus, a brain region important for episodic memory encoding. To resolve this apparent conflict and determine whether and how the hippocampus supports memory encoding under cortisol, we combined behavioral assays of associative memory, high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and pharmacological manipulation of cortisol in a within-participant, double-blinded procedure.

Mnemonic Content and Hippocampal Patterns Shape Judgments of Time.

Our experience of time can feel dilated or compressed, rather than reflecting true "clock time." Although many contextual factors influence the subjective perception of time, it is unclear how memory accessibility plays a role in constructing our experience of and memory for time. Here, we used a combination of behavioral and functional MRI measures in healthy young adults ( = 147) to ask the question of how memory is incorporated into temporal duration judgments.

Temporal Dynamics of Competition between Statistical Learning and Episodic Memory in Intracranial Recordings of Human Visual Cortex.

The function of long-term memory is not just to reminisce about the past, but also to make predictions that help us behave appropriately and efficiently in the future. This predictive function of memory provides a new perspective on the classic question from memory research of why we remember some things but not others. If prediction is a key outcome of memory, then the extent to which an item generates a prediction signifies that this information already exists in memory and need not be encoded.

Remembering the pattern: A longitudinal case study on statistical learning in spatial navigation and memory consolidation.

Distinct brain systems are thought to support statistical learning over different timescales. Regularities encountered during online perceptual experience can be acquired rapidly by the hippocampus. Further processing during offline consolidation can establish these regularities gradually in cortical regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

Statistical prediction of the future impairs episodic encoding of the present.

Memory is typically thought of as enabling reminiscence about past experiences. However, memory also informs and guides processing of future experiences. These two functions of memory are often at odds: Remembering specific experiences from the past requires storing idiosyncratic properties that define particular moments in space and time, but by definition such properties will not be shared with similar situations in the future and thus may not be applicable to future situations.

The prevalence and importance of statistical learning in human cognition and behavior.

Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from the environment over time, has become a topic of burgeoning interest. Its influence on behavior, spanning infancy to adulthood, has been demonstrated across a range of tasks, both those labeled as tests of statistical learning and those from other learning domains that predated statistical learning research or that are not typically considered in the context of that literature. Given this pervasive role in human cognition, statistical learning has the potential to reconcile seemingly distinct learning phenomena and may be an under-appreciated but important contributor to a wide range of human behaviors that are studied as unrelated processes, such as episodic memory and spatial navigation.