Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes
The brain actively reshapes our understanding of past events in light of new incoming information. In the current study, we ask how the brain supports this updating process during the encoding and recall of naturalistic stimuli. One group of participants watched a movie (‘The Sixth Sense’) with a ci...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
2022-12-01
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| Series: | eLife |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://elifesciences.org/articles/79045 |
| _version_ | 1797951803606695936 |
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| author | Asieh Zadbood Samuel Nastase Janice Chen Kenneth A Norman Uri Hasson |
| author_facet | Asieh Zadbood Samuel Nastase Janice Chen Kenneth A Norman Uri Hasson |
| author_sort | Asieh Zadbood |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The brain actively reshapes our understanding of past events in light of new incoming information. In the current study, we ask how the brain supports this updating process during the encoding and recall of naturalistic stimuli. One group of participants watched a movie (‘The Sixth Sense’) with a cinematic ‘twist’ at the end that dramatically changed the interpretation of previous events. Next, participants were asked to verbally recall the movie events, taking into account the new ‘twist’ information. Most participants updated their recall to incorporate the twist. Two additional groups recalled the movie without having to update their memories during recall: one group never saw the twist; another group was exposed to the twist prior to the beginning of the movie, and thus the twist information was incorporated both during encoding and recall. We found that providing participants with information about the twist beforehand altered neural response patterns during movie-viewing in the default mode network (DMN). Moreover, presenting participants with the twist at the end of the movie changed the neural representation of the previously-encoded information during recall in a subset of DMN regions. Further evidence for this transformation was obtained by comparing the neural activation patterns during encoding and recall and correlating them with behavioral signatures of memory updating. Our results demonstrate that neural representations of past events encoded in the DMN are dynamically integrated with new information that reshapes our understanding in natural contexts. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-10T22:36:21Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8ebdbff184f8427da2b9d31f213c25b6 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2050-084X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-10T22:36:21Z |
| publishDate | 2022-12-01 |
| publisher | eLife Sciences Publications Ltd |
| record_format | Article |
| series | eLife |
| spelling | doaj.art-8ebdbff184f8427da2b9d31f213c25b62023-01-16T13:03:33ZengeLife Sciences Publications LtdeLife2050-084X2022-12-011110.7554/eLife.79045Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changesAsieh Zadbood0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9098-0510Samuel Nastase1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7013-5275Janice Chen2Kenneth A Norman3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5887-9682Uri Hasson4Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, United StatesPrinceton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, United StatesDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United StatesPrinceton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, United StatesPrinceton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, United StatesThe brain actively reshapes our understanding of past events in light of new incoming information. In the current study, we ask how the brain supports this updating process during the encoding and recall of naturalistic stimuli. One group of participants watched a movie (‘The Sixth Sense’) with a cinematic ‘twist’ at the end that dramatically changed the interpretation of previous events. Next, participants were asked to verbally recall the movie events, taking into account the new ‘twist’ information. Most participants updated their recall to incorporate the twist. Two additional groups recalled the movie without having to update their memories during recall: one group never saw the twist; another group was exposed to the twist prior to the beginning of the movie, and thus the twist information was incorporated both during encoding and recall. We found that providing participants with information about the twist beforehand altered neural response patterns during movie-viewing in the default mode network (DMN). Moreover, presenting participants with the twist at the end of the movie changed the neural representation of the previously-encoded information during recall in a subset of DMN regions. Further evidence for this transformation was obtained by comparing the neural activation patterns during encoding and recall and correlating them with behavioral signatures of memory updating. Our results demonstrate that neural representations of past events encoded in the DMN are dynamically integrated with new information that reshapes our understanding in natural contexts.https://elifesciences.org/articles/79045memory updatingneural representationsepisodic memorynaturalistic paradigmdefault mode networkevent processing |
| spellingShingle | Asieh Zadbood Samuel Nastase Janice Chen Kenneth A Norman Uri Hasson Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes eLife memory updating neural representations episodic memory naturalistic paradigm default mode network event processing |
| title | Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| title_full | Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| title_fullStr | Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| title_full_unstemmed | Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| title_short | Neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| title_sort | neural representations of naturalistic events are updated as our understanding of the past changes |
| topic | memory updating neural representations episodic memory naturalistic paradigm default mode network event processing |
| url | https://elifesciences.org/articles/79045 |
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