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The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory

Newly formed memories are not passively stored for future retrieval; rather, they are reactivated offline and thereby strengthened and transformed. However, reactivation is not a uniform process: it occurs throughout different states of consciousness, including conscious rehearsal during wakefulness...

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Autores principales: Tal, Amir, Schechtman, Eitan, Caughran, Bruce, Paller, Ken A, Davachi, Lila
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10402076/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37546839
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.26.546400
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author Tal, Amir
Schechtman, Eitan
Caughran, Bruce
Paller, Ken A
Davachi, Lila
author_facet Tal, Amir
Schechtman, Eitan
Caughran, Bruce
Paller, Ken A
Davachi, Lila
author_sort Tal, Amir
collection PubMed
description Newly formed memories are not passively stored for future retrieval; rather, they are reactivated offline and thereby strengthened and transformed. However, reactivation is not a uniform process: it occurs throughout different states of consciousness, including conscious rehearsal during wakefulness and unconscious processing during both wakefulness and sleep. In this study, we explore the consequences of reactivation during conscious and unconscious awake states. Forty-one participants learned associations consisting of adjective-object-position triads. Objects were clustered into distinct semantic groups (e.g., multiple fruits, vehicles, musical instruments) which allowed us to examine the consequences of reactivation on semantically-related memories. After an extensive learning phase, some triads were reactivated consciously, through cued retrieval, or unconsciously, through subliminal priming. In both conditions, the adjective was used as the cue. Reactivation impacted memory for the most distal association (i.e., the spatial position of associated objects) in a consciousness-dependent and memory-strength-dependent manner. First, conscious reactivation of a triad resulted in a weakening of other semantically related memories, but only those that were initially more accurate (i.e., memories with lower pre-reactivation spatial errors). This is similar to what has been previously demonstrated in studies employing retrieval-induced forgetting designs. Unconscious reactivation, on the other hand, benefited memory selectively for weak cued items. Semantically linked associations were not impaired, but rather integrated with the reactivated memory. Taken together, our results demonstrate that conscious and unconscious reactivation of memories during wakefulness have qualitatively different consequences on memory for distal associations. Effects are memory-strength-dependent, as has been shown for reactivation during sleep. Results support a consciousness-dependent inhibition account, according to which unconscious reactivation involves less inhibitory dynamics than conscious reactivation, thus allowing more liberal spread of activation. Our findings set the stage for additional exploration into the role of consciousness in memory structuring.
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spelling pubmed-104020762023-08-05 The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory Tal, Amir Schechtman, Eitan Caughran, Bruce Paller, Ken A Davachi, Lila bioRxiv Article Newly formed memories are not passively stored for future retrieval; rather, they are reactivated offline and thereby strengthened and transformed. However, reactivation is not a uniform process: it occurs throughout different states of consciousness, including conscious rehearsal during wakefulness and unconscious processing during both wakefulness and sleep. In this study, we explore the consequences of reactivation during conscious and unconscious awake states. Forty-one participants learned associations consisting of adjective-object-position triads. Objects were clustered into distinct semantic groups (e.g., multiple fruits, vehicles, musical instruments) which allowed us to examine the consequences of reactivation on semantically-related memories. After an extensive learning phase, some triads were reactivated consciously, through cued retrieval, or unconsciously, through subliminal priming. In both conditions, the adjective was used as the cue. Reactivation impacted memory for the most distal association (i.e., the spatial position of associated objects) in a consciousness-dependent and memory-strength-dependent manner. First, conscious reactivation of a triad resulted in a weakening of other semantically related memories, but only those that were initially more accurate (i.e., memories with lower pre-reactivation spatial errors). This is similar to what has been previously demonstrated in studies employing retrieval-induced forgetting designs. Unconscious reactivation, on the other hand, benefited memory selectively for weak cued items. Semantically linked associations were not impaired, but rather integrated with the reactivated memory. Taken together, our results demonstrate that conscious and unconscious reactivation of memories during wakefulness have qualitatively different consequences on memory for distal associations. Effects are memory-strength-dependent, as has been shown for reactivation during sleep. Results support a consciousness-dependent inhibition account, according to which unconscious reactivation involves less inhibitory dynamics than conscious reactivation, thus allowing more liberal spread of activation. Our findings set the stage for additional exploration into the role of consciousness in memory structuring. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC10402076/ /pubmed/37546839 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.26.546400 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) , which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
spellingShingle Article
Tal, Amir
Schechtman, Eitan
Caughran, Bruce
Paller, Ken A
Davachi, Lila
The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title_full The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title_fullStr The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title_full_unstemmed The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title_short The reach of reactivation: Effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
title_sort reach of reactivation: effects of consciously-triggered versus unconsciously-triggered reactivation of associative memory
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10402076/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37546839
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.07.26.546400
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