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Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams

Personally experienced events include multiple elements, such as locations, people, and objects. These events are thought to be stored in episodic memory as coherent representations [1] that allow the retrieval of all elements from a partial cue (“pattern completion” [2–6]). However, direct evidence...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Horner, Aidan J., Burgess, Neil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cell Press 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4012134/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24746796
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.012
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author Horner, Aidan J.
Burgess, Neil
author_facet Horner, Aidan J.
Burgess, Neil
author_sort Horner, Aidan J.
collection PubMed
description Personally experienced events include multiple elements, such as locations, people, and objects. These events are thought to be stored in episodic memory as coherent representations [1] that allow the retrieval of all elements from a partial cue (“pattern completion” [2–6]). However, direct evidence for coherent multielement representations is lacking. Their presence would predict that retrieval of one element from an event should be dependent on retrieval of the other elements from that event. If we remember where we were, we should be more likely to remember who we met and what object they gave us. Here we provide evidence for this type of dependency in remembering three-element events. Dependency was seen when all three elements were encoded simultaneously, or when the three overlapping pairwise associations comprising an event were learned on separate trials. However, dependency was only seen in the separated encoding condition when all possible within-event associations were encoded. These results suggest that episodic memories are stored as coherent representations in which associations between all within-event elements allow retrieval via pattern completion. They also show that related experiences encountered at different times can be flexibly integrated into these coherent representations.
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spelling pubmed-40121342014-05-09 Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams Horner, Aidan J. Burgess, Neil Curr Biol Report Personally experienced events include multiple elements, such as locations, people, and objects. These events are thought to be stored in episodic memory as coherent representations [1] that allow the retrieval of all elements from a partial cue (“pattern completion” [2–6]). However, direct evidence for coherent multielement representations is lacking. Their presence would predict that retrieval of one element from an event should be dependent on retrieval of the other elements from that event. If we remember where we were, we should be more likely to remember who we met and what object they gave us. Here we provide evidence for this type of dependency in remembering three-element events. Dependency was seen when all three elements were encoded simultaneously, or when the three overlapping pairwise associations comprising an event were learned on separate trials. However, dependency was only seen in the separated encoding condition when all possible within-event associations were encoded. These results suggest that episodic memories are stored as coherent representations in which associations between all within-event elements allow retrieval via pattern completion. They also show that related experiences encountered at different times can be flexibly integrated into these coherent representations. Cell Press 2014-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4012134/ /pubmed/24746796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.012 Text en © 2014 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
spellingShingle Report
Horner, Aidan J.
Burgess, Neil
Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title_full Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title_fullStr Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title_full_unstemmed Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title_short Pattern Completion in Multielement Event Engrams
title_sort pattern completion in multielement event engrams
topic Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4012134/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24746796
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.012
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