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The Ruche test is a visuospatial form of the Rey auditory verbal learning test (RAVLT), with initial evidence of utility in the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE)-related memory disorders. To present the translation to Brazilian Portuguese and modification of the Ruche test (RUCHE-M) and compare the RUCHE-M and RAVLT performance between patients with right and left TLE. Twenty-five neuropsychologists participated in instrument adaptation. Thirty-seven patients with right (n = 19) and left (n = 18) TLE participated. Data were compared with the Mann–Whitney U test. All specialists considered the final RUCHE-M to be adequate. The RUCHE-M forgetting speed index (FSI) score and several RAVLT scores differed significantly between patients with right and left TLE. The RUCHE-M showed limited utility for the assessment of visuospatial episodic memory in patients with TLE. The manipulation of memory binding as demonstrated by FSI score seems to be a promising paradigm for the assessment of right hippocampal function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Caregivers read to their child a book with opportunities to integrate facts. • The book either had or did not have embedded questions on the book's facts. • Questions increased dyads' integration of facts in talk while reading. • Children's memory integration performance was most predicted by integration talk. • Shared book reading promotes young children's factual memory integration. Young children rapidly learn facts about the world. One mechanism supporting knowledge acquisition is memory integration: derivation of new knowledge by combining separate, yet related facts accumulated over time. There are both developmental changes and individual differences in young children's learning through memory integration. However, there is little research on how everyday social interactions may promote memory integration and contribute to individual differences. Accordingly, we investigated how the everyday social interactions of caregiver-child shared book reading support 5- to 6-year-olds' memory integration (N = 82 parent-child dyads; 47 female children; M age 6.10; 56.5 % White non-Latinx, 15 % Black, 6 % White Latinx, 5.5 % Asian, 17 % more than one race). Caregivers read a narrative book that included opportunities to integrate facts. Half the dyads were assigned to an embedded questions condition (questions on facts included throughout the book) and half to a no embedded questions condition (statements only). We measured dyads' extratextual talk while reading for the extent to which they integrated the facts (integration talk). Children's learning was tested with both memory integration and fact recall questions. Dyads in the embedded questions condition had more integration talk. The extent to which the dyads integrated while reading predicted children's integration performance, above and beyond condition effects. This effect was specific to memory integration: integration talk nor condition accounted for fact recall. These results suggest that shared book reading can support young children's integration, especially when books engage dyads through embedded questions and dyads integrate facts while reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined memory integration performance in Chinese adults with high and low executive function levels in a cross-Chinese-English language context. The executive function of 356 college students was assessed prior to the experiments to identify participants with different executive function levels. All three studies utilized the separate-sentence paradigm as the experimental design. Considering that memory integration involves the encoding of two stem facts and the retrieval process of the integrated facts, Experiment 1 investigated memory integration performance across different encoding language conditions, while Experiment 2 focused on retrieval language conditions. Experiment 3 aimed to address limitations and explore the impact of different questioning languages in cross-language encoding conditions. Results showed that the presentation language during encoding significantly influenced memory integration, with better performance when the first stem fact was presented in the first language. The questioning language used for integrated facts also affected memory integration, with performance declining as the difficulty of switching between questioning and encoding languages increased. It is noteworthy that participants' retrieval of questions in their first language was associated with superior results in terms of integration performance. The study suggests that the influence of executive function and language condition on memory integration varied depending on the specific processing stage. These findings support theories on low surface similarity's influence on knowledge integration and highlight the role of executive function at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representing events in episodic memory in a coherent manner requires that their constituent elements are bound together. So far, only few moderators of these binding processes have been identified. Here we investigate whether the presence of an agentic element in an event facilitates binding. The results from six experiments provided no evidence for a facilitating effect of agency on the binding of event elements. In addition, binding effects were only found when event elements were presented simultaneously, but not when they were presented sequentially pairwise, contrary to previous findings. The results suggest that the presence of an agentic element in an event does not, or only to a very limited extent, contribute to the formation of coherent memory representations and that additional processes may be required when binding event elements across temporarily divided encoding episodes. These findings add to a growing body of research regarding moderators and processes relevant for the binding of event elements in episodic memory. Explanations of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) was recently approved as a formal diagnosis in the DSM‐5‐TR. The implementation of bereavement interventions is frequently requested, but their effectiveness has been controversial. Narrative reconstruction (NR) is a time‐limited integrative therapy, originally developed for the treatment of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and adapted for the treatment of PGD. NR consists of exposure to the loss memory, a detailed written reconstruction of the loss memory narrative, and an elaboration of the personal significance of that memory for the bereaved. Objectives: In this study we evaluated the efficacy of NR for PGD. Method: In this study, 33 participants with PGD were quasi‐randomized—that is, assigned to an immediate (n = 20) or delayed (n = 13) 16‐session NR intervention. PGD, intrusion, avoidance and depression symptoms, as well as levels of the loss memory integration, were assessed at pretreatment, post‐treatment, and at a 3‐month follow‐up. Results: Mixed linear models showed significant intervention effects for PGD and intrusive symptomatology. Results also showed an increase in integration of the loss memory, and improvements remained stable for all outcomes at follow‐up. Conclusion: In this study we established NR as an effective intervention for PGD and call for further validation in future studies. Integrating this intervention into the routine care of people with PGD seems important and beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress can powerfully influence the way we form memories, particularly the extent to which they are integrated or situated within an underlying spatiotemporal and broader knowledge architecture. These different representations in turn have significant consequences for the way we use these memories to guide later behavior. Puzzlingly, although stress has historically been argued to promote fragmentation, leading to disjoint memory representations, more recent work suggests that stress can also facilitate memory binding and integration. Understanding the circumstances under which stress fosters integration will be key to resolving this discrepancy and unpacking the mechanisms by which stress can shape later behavior. Here, we examine memory integration at multiple levels: linking together the content of an individual experience, threading associations between related but distinct events, and binding an experience into a pre-existing schema or sense of causal structure. We discuss neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying each form of integration as well as findings regarding how stress, aversive learning, and negative affect can modulate each. In this analysis, we uncover that stress can indeed promote each level of integration. We also show how memory integration may apply to understanding effects of alcohol, highlighting extant clinical and preclinical findings and opportunities for further investigation. Finally, we consider the implications of integration and fragmentation for later memory-guided behavior, and the importance of understanding which type of memory representation is potentiated in order to design appropriate interventions.

Remembering events coherently requires the binding of their constituting elements in episodic memory. Considering various demonstrations of social motives influencing cognition and preliminary evidence for a facilitating effect of social status on associative memory, we investigated whether social status influences binding processes in episodic memory. Participants were presented with events consisting of a person, an object, and a location, with the status of the person being manipulated. Two experiments yielded no evidence for a facilitating effect of social status on binding processes in episodic memory. These findings suggest that effects of social status are limited to simpler associative memories, as demonstrated by previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even once children can accurately remember their experiences, they nevertheless struggle to use those memories in flexible new ways—as in when drawing inferences. However, it remains an open question as to whether the developmental differences observed during both memory formation and inference itself represent a fundamental limitation on children's learning mechanisms, or rather their deployment of suboptimal strategy. Here, 7–9‐year‐old children (N = 154) and young adults (N = 130) first formed strong memories for initial (AB) associations and then engaged in one of three learning strategies as they viewed overlapping (BC) pairs. We found that being told to integrate—combine ABC during learning—both significantly improved children's ability to explicitly relate the indirectly associated A and C items during inference and protected the underlying pair memories from forgetting. However, this finding contrasted with implicit evidence for memory‐to‐memory connections: Adults and children both formed A‐C links prior to any knowledge of an inference test—yet for children, such links were most apparent when they were told to simply encode BC, not integrate. Moreover, the accessibility of such implicit links differed between children and adults, with adults using them to make explicit inferences but children only doing so for well‐established direct AB pairs. These results suggest that while a lack of integration strategy may explain a large share of the developmental differences in explicit inference, children and adults nevertheless differ in both the circumstances under which they connect interrelated memories and their ability to later leverage those links to inform flexible behaviours. Research Highlights: Children and adults view AB and BC pairs related through a shared item, B. This provides an opportunity for learners to connect A–C in memory.Being encouraged to integrate ABC during learning boosted performance on an explicit test of A–C connections (children and adults) and protected from forgetting (children).Children and adults differed in when implicit A–C connections were formed—occurring primarily when told to separately encode BC (children) versus integrate (adults), respectively.Adults used implicit A–C connections to facilitate explicit judgments, while children did not. Our results suggest developmental differences in the learning conditions promoting memory‐to‐memory connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Educational opportunities occur through naturalistic everyday life experiences (e.g., reading a newspaper, listening to a podcast, or visiting a museum). Research primarily examines learning under controlled conditions, such as in a classroom or laboratory. There is relatively little known about the extent to which adults extract semantic content, beyond factual recall, from naturalistic educational experiences. In the present work, we focused on virtual museum exhibits. The materials were sourced directly from an art history museum. The naturalistic nature of this work stems from the type of content used though an important component of naturalistic learning—motivational processes—was not measured. In each of three experiments, we assessed adult learners’ performance on tests of factual recall, inferential reasoning, and self-derivation through memory integration from naturalistic virtual museum exhibits. In anticipation of the potential challenge associated with learning outcomes under naturalistic conditions, we administered a yoked protocol under which participants had opportunities to engage in retrieval practice (Experiment 2a) or restudy (Experiment 2b) as explicit mechanisms of support for the three tests of learning. In all experiments, participants performed successfully on all three tests of learning; factual recall was the most accessible of the three learning outcomes. There was no difference in performance at the group level across experiments, but there was at the individual level, such that idea units generated during retrieval practice predicted learning outcomes, whereas restudy of those exact idea units did not. The current work provides novel insight into mechanisms underlying adult learning from naturalistic educational opportunities.

Many everyday decisions are based not only on memories ofdirect experiences, but on memories that are integrated acrossmultiple distinct experiences. Sometimes memory integrationbetween existing memories and newly learnt informationoccurs rapidly, without requiring inference during thedecision. It is known that prior knowledge (i.e. schema)affects the initial acquisition, and consolidation, of memories.In this study, we explore the effect of schema on theintegration of acquired memories between paired associates(e.g. integrating A-B and B-C into A-B-C) that were schemaconsistent or inconsistent, as confirmed with a latent semanticanalysis of text corpora. We find that enabling fast learning,by using material that is consistent with a schema, allows forfast memory integration. These behavioral results areconsistent with predictions generated from neuroscientifichypotheses suggesting that an existing schema might enableneocortical learning that is distinct from a more explicithippocampus-mediated integration of new information.

Neutral events preceding emotional experiences can be better remembered, likely by assigning them as significant to guide possible use in future. Yet, the neurobiological mechanisms of how emotional learning enhances memory for past mundane events remain unclear. By two behavioral studies and one functional magnetic resonance imaging study with an adapted sensory preconditioning paradigm, we show rapid neural reactivation and connectivity changes underlying emotion-charged retroactive memory enhancement. Behaviorally, emotional learning retroactively enhanced initial memory for neutral associations across the three studies. Neurally, emotional learning potentiated trial-specific reactivation of overlapping neural traces in the hippocampus and stimulus-relevant neocortex. It further induced rapid hippocampal-neocortical functional reorganization supporting such retroactive memory benefit, as characterized by enhanced hippocampal-neocortical coupling modulated by the amygdala during emotional learning, and a shift of hippocampal connectivity from stimulus-relevant neocortex to distributed transmodal prefrontal-parietal areas at post-learning rests. Together, emotional learning retroactively promotes memory integration for past neutral events through stimulating trial-specific reactivation of overlapping representations and reorganization of associated memories into an integrated network to foster its priority for future use.

Music can act as a mnemonic device that can elicit multiple memories. How musical and non-musical information integrate into complex crossmodal memory representations has however rarely been investigated. Here, we studied the ability of human subjects to associate visual objects with melodies. Musical laypersons and professional musicians performed an associative inference task that tested the ability to form and memorize paired associations between objects and melodies ("direct trials") and to integrate these pairs into more complex representations where melodies are linked with two objects across trials ("indirect trials"). We further investigated whether and how musical expertise modulates these two processes. We analyzed accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of direct and indirect trials in both groups. We reasoned that the musical and cross-modal memory demands of musicianship might modulate performance in the task and might thus reveal mechanisms that underlie the association and integration of visual information with musical information. Although musicians showed a higher overall memory accuracy, non-musicians' accuracy was well above chance level in both trial types, thus indicating a significant ability to associate and integrate musical with visual information even in musically untrained subjects. However, non-musicians showed shorter RTs in indirect compared to direct trials, whereas the reverse pattern was found in musicians. Moreover, accuracy of direct and indirect trials correlated significantly in musicians but not in non-musicians. Consistent with previous accounts of visual associative memory, we interpret these findings as suggestive of at least two complimentary mechanisms that contribute to visual-melodic memory integration. (I) A default mechanism that mainly operates at encoding of complex visual-melodic associations and that works with surprising efficacy even in musically untrained subjects. (II) A retrievalbased mechanism that critically depends on an expert ability to maintain and discriminate visual-melodic associations across extended memory delays. Future studies may investigate how these mechanisms contribute to the everyday experience of music-evoked memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational opportunities occur through naturalistic everyday life experiences (e.g., reading a newspaper, listening to a podcast, or visiting a museum). Research primarily examines learning under controlled conditions, such as in a classroom or laboratory. There is relatively little known about the extent to which adults extract semantic content, beyond factual recall, from naturalistic educational experiences. In the present work, we focused on virtual museum exhibits. The materials were sourced directly from an art history museum. The naturalistic nature of this work stems from the type of content used though an important component of naturalistic learning—motivational processes—was not measured. In each of three experiments, we assessed adult learners' performance on tests of factual recall, inferential reasoning, and self-derivation through memory integration from naturalistic virtual museum exhibits. In anticipation of the potential challenge associated with learning outcomes under naturalistic conditions, we administered a yoked protocol under which participants had opportunities to engage in retrieval practice (Experiment 2a) or restudy (Experiment 2b) as explicit mechanisms of support for the three tests of learning. In all experiments, participants performed successfully on all three tests of learning; factual recall was the most accessible of the three learning outcomes. There was no difference in performance at the group level across experiments, but there was at the individual level, such that idea units generated during retrieval practice predicted learning outcomes, whereas restudy of those exact idea units did not. The current work provides novel insight into mechanisms underlying adult learning from naturalistic educational opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traumatic memory intrusions, the involuntary retrieval of unwanted memories, significantly impact mental health. The dual representation theory proposes that the origin of intrusion lies in the overactivated sensory memory not being integrated with the corresponding contextual memory, highlighting the crucial associations between memory contextualization and intrusion. To test this, our study investigated whether enhancing memory contextualization could effectively reduce intrusion. After experiencing analogue trauma with the trauma film paradigm, 96 healthy participants were randomly allocated to three intervention groups: active contextualization (AC) in which participants actively retrieve and restructure film content, passive contextualization (PC) in which participants passively restudy content-matched pre-contextualized information, and working memory taxation (WM) in which participants performed a working memory dual-task. Diary recordings over the subsequent week revealed a significant reduction in intrusion frequency in the AC group compared to both the PC group and a no-intervention control group. Furthermore, comparing AC with WM, a well-established laboratory intervention on intrusion, established a superior efficacy of the AC intervention in reducing intrusions. Finally, analyses of the explicitly recollected film memories identified the critical element of active contextualization to be memory integration induced by active memory retrieval. Together, our findings suggest that active contextualization causally diminishes intrusions, providing novel insights into the regulation of the contextual memory system in intrusion intervention., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Music can act as a mnemonic device that can elicit multiple memories. How musical and non-musical information integrate into complex cross-modal memory representations has however rarely been investigated. Here, we studied the ability of human subjects to associate visual objects with melodies. Musical laypersons and professional musicians performed an associative inference task that tested the ability to form and memorize paired associations between objects and melodies (“direct trials”) and to integrate these pairs into more complex representations where melodies are linked with two objects across trials (“indirect trials”). We further investigated whether and how musical expertise modulates these two processes. We analyzed accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of direct and indirect trials in both groups. We reasoned that the musical and cross-modal memory demands of musicianship might modulate performance in the task and might thus reveal mechanisms that underlie the association and integration of visual information with musical information. Although musicians showed a higher overall memory accuracy, non-musicians’ accuracy was well above chance level in both trial types, thus indicating a significant ability to associate and integrate musical with visual information even in musically untrained subjects. However, non-musicians showed shorter RTs in indirect compared to direct trials, whereas the reverse pattern was found in musicians. Moreover, accuracy of direct and indirect trials correlated significantly in musicians but not in non-musicians. Consistent with previous accounts of visual associative memory, we interpret these findings as suggestive of at least two complimentary mechanisms that contribute to visual-melodic memory integration. (I) A default mechanism that mainly operates at encoding of complex visual-melodic associations and that works with surprising efficacy even in musically untrained subjects. (II) A retrieval-based mechanism that critically depends on an expert ability to maintain and discriminate visual-melodic associations across extended memory delays. Future studies may investigate how these mechanisms contribute to the everyday experience of music-evoked memories.

Transitive inference (TI) is a critical capacity involving the integration of relevant information into prior knowledge structure for drawing novel inferences on unobserved relationships. To date, the neural correlates of TI remain unclear due to the small sample size and heterogeneity of various experimental tasks from individual studies. Here, the meta-analysis on 32 fMRI studies was performed to detect brain activation patterns of TI and its three paradigms (spatial inference, hierarchical inference, and associative inference). We found the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex (PFC), putamen, posterior parietal cortex (PPC), retrosplenial cortex (RSC), supplementary motor area (SMA), precentral gyrus (PreCG), and median cingulate cortex (MCC) were engaged in TI. Specifically, the RSC was implicated in the associative inference, whereas PPC, SMA, PreCG, and MCC were implicated in the hierarchical inference. In addition, the hierarchical inference and associative inference both evoked activation in the hippocampus, medial PFC, and PCC. Although the meta-analysis on spatial inference did not generate a reliable result due to insufficient amount of investigations, the present work still offers a new insight for better understanding the neural basis underlying TI.

Two fundamental issues in memory research concern when later experiences strengthen or weaken initial memories and when the two memories become linked or remain independent. A promising candidate for explaining these issues is semantic relatedness. Here, across five paired-associate learning experiments (N=1000), we systematically varied the semantic relatedness between initial and later cues, initial and later targets, or both. We found that learning retroactively benefited long-term memory performance for semantically related words (vs. unshown control words), and these benefits increased as a function of relatedness. Critically, memory dependence between initial and later pairs also increased with relatedness, suggesting that pre-existing semantic relationships promote interdependence for memories formed across episodes. We also found that modest retroactive benefits, but not interdependencies, emerged when subjects learned via studying rather than practice testing. These findings demonstrate that semantic relatedness during new learning retroactively strengthens old associations while scaffolding new ones into well-fortified memory traces.

New memories can strengthen old memories if the recent and past experience contain elements that are semantically related.

Emotional experiences can profoundly impact our conceptual model of the world, modifying how we represent and remember a host of information even indirectly associated with that experienced in the past. Yet, how a new emotional experience infiltrates and spreads across pre-existing semantic knowledge structures (e.g., categories) is unknown. We used a modified aversive sensory preconditioning paradigm in fMRI (n = 35) to investigate whether threat memories integrate with a pre-established category to alter the representation of the entire category. We observed selective but transient changes in the representation of conceptually related items in the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and occipitotemporal cortex following threat conditioning to a simple cue (geometric shape) pre-associated with a different, but related, set of category exemplars. These representational changes persisted beyond 24 h in the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex. Reactivation of the semantic category during threat conditioning, combined with activation of the hippocampus or medial prefrontal cortex, was predictive of subsequent amygdala reactivity toward novel category members at test. This provides evidence for online integration of emotional experiences into semantic categories, which then promotes threat generalization. Behaviorally, threat conditioning by proxy selectively and retroactively enhanced recognition memory and increased the perceived typicality of the semantic category indirectly associated with threat. These findings detail a complex route through which new emotional learning generalizes by modifying semantic structures built up over time and stored in memory as conceptual knowledge. • Mechanisms of indirect threat learning are revealed by MVPA of fMRI • Emotional memory integration promotes generalization across semantic categories • Amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex reinstate indirect threat memory • Durable threat representation changes found in hippocampus and perirhinal cortex How do new emotional experiences integrate with prior knowledge? Using sensory preconditioning to produce "threat learning by proxy," Cooper et al. show that threat memories integrate with and generalize across categories. The amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex show transient generalization, whereas the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex are more durable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associative learning is often considered to require the physical presence of stimuli in the environment in order for them to be linked. This, however, is not a necessary condition for learning. Indeed, associative relationships can form between events that are never directly paired. That is, associative learning can occur by integrating information across different phases of training. Higher-order conditioning provides evidence for such learning through two deceptively similar designs – sensory preconditioning and second-order conditioning. In this review, we detail the procedures and factors that influence learning in these designs, describe the associative relationships that can be acquired, and argue for the importance of this knowledge in studying brain function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self‐derivation of new factual knowledge is crucial for building a knowledge base. In three experiments, we investigated self‐derivation about prescription medications. In Experiment 1, adults self‐derived new knowledge across textual materials on 40% of trials. Participants in Experiment 2 performed similarly (42%), even when half the information was presented in videos. It was crucial that participants received both learning episodes to successfully self‐derive: control condition participants received half the necessary information and performed significantly lower. When a delay was imposed between related facts in Experiment 3, participants self‐derived on only 33% of trials and performance did not differ from the control condition. The present research expanded our understanding of adults' learning and self‐derivation across media about medications. It revealed room for improvement in adults' learning and self‐derivation about health information. This work suggests the need to identify factors that alter performance, including better understanding of the properties of information sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associative learning is often considered to require the physical presence of stimuli in the environment in order for them to be linked. This, however, is not a necessary condition for learning. Indeed, associative relationships can form between events that are never directly paired. That is, associative learning can occur by integrating information across different phases of training. Higher-order conditioning provides evidence for such learning through two deceptively similar designs – sensory preconditioning and second-order conditioning. In this review, we detail the procedures and factors that influence learning in these designs, describe the associative relationships that can be acquired, and argue for the importance of this knowledge in studying brain function.

The journal Hippocampus has passed the milestone of 25 years of publications on the topic of a highly studied brain structure, and its closely associated brain areas. In a recent celebration of this event, a Boston memory group invited 16 speakers to address the question of progress in understanding the hippocampus that has been achieved. Here we present a summary of these talks organized as progress on four main themes: (1) Understanding the hippocampus in terms of its interactions with multiple cortical areas within the medial temporal lobe memory system, (2) understanding the relationship between memory and spatial information processing functions of the hippocampal region, (3) understanding the role of temporal organization in spatial and memory processing by the hippocampus, and (4) understanding how the hippocampus integrates related events into networks of memories. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Declarative memory abilities change across adulthood. Semantic memory and autobiographic episodic knowledge can remain stable or even increase from mid- to late adulthood, while episodic memory abilities decline in later adulthood. Although it is well known that prior knowledge influences new learning, it is unclear whether the experiential growth of knowledge and memory traces across the lifespan may drive favorable adaptations in some basic memory processes. We hypothesized that an increased reliance on memory integration may be an adaptive mechanism to handle increased interference from accumulating memory traces and knowledge across adulthood. In turn, this may confer an improved ability for integration, observable in middle-age, before the onset of major aging-related declines. We further tested whether the hypothesized increase would be associated with previously observed reductions in memory discrimination performance in midlife. Data from a sample of healthy middle-aged (40–50 years, n = 40) and younger adults (20–28 years, n = 41) did not support the hypothesis of improved integration, as assessed by an associative inference paradigm. Instead, age-equivalent performance on both integration and discrimination measures were observed [Bayes factors (BFs)10 = 0.19–0.25], along with expected higher verbal knowledge and slower perceptual speed for middle-aged [(BFs)10 = 8.52–73.52]. The results contribute to an increased understanding of memory processing in midlife, an understudied portion of the lifespan, and suggest that two core episodic memory processes, integration and discrimination, can be maintained in healthy middle-aged adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declarative memory abilities change across adulthood. Semantic memory and autobiographic episodic knowledge can remain stable or even increase from mid- to late adulthood, while episodic memory abilities decline in later adulthood. Although it is well known that prior knowledge influences new learning, it is unclear whether the experiential growth of knowledge and memory traces across the lifespan may drive favorable adaptations in some basic memory processes. We hypothesized that an increased reliance on memory integration may be an adaptive mechanism to handle increased interference from accumulating memory traces and knowledge across adulthood. In turn, this may confer an improved ability for integration, observable in middle-age, before the onset of major aging-related declines. We further tested whether the hypothesized increase would be associated with previously observed reductions in memory discrimination performance in midlife. Data from a sample of healthy middle-aged (40–50 years, n = 40) and younger adults (20–28 years, n = 41) did not support the hypothesis of improved integration, as assessed by an associative inference paradigm. Instead, age-equivalent performance on both integration and discrimination measures were observed [Bayes factors (BFs)10 = 0.19–0.25], along with expected higher verbal knowledge and slower perceptual speed for middle-aged [(BFs)10 = 8.52–73.52]. The results contribute to an increased understanding of memory processing in midlife, an understudied portion of the lifespan, and suggest that two core episodic memory processes, integration and discrimination, can be maintained in healthy middle-aged adults.

Maladaptive emotional memories are a transdiagnostic feature of mental health problems. Therefore, understanding whether and how emotional memories can change might help to prevent and treat mental disorders. We tested whether neutral memories of naturalistic events can retroactively acquire positive or negative affect, in a preregistered three-day Modification of Valence in Episodes (MOVIE) paradigm. On Day 1, participants (N = 41) encoded memories of neutral movie scenes, representing lifelike naturalistic experiences. On Day 2, they retrieved each episode before viewing a happy, sad, or neutral scene from the same movie (yielding a within-subjects design with a neutral-negative, neutral-positive, and neutral-neutral condition). On Day 3, participants again retrieved each memory from Day 1. We assessed the affective tone of episodes through facial expressions of positive and negative affect (using facial electromyography, fEMG) and through self-reported feelings. Positive updating of neutral episodes led to increased expressions of positive affect, whereas negative updating led to increased self-reported negative feelings. These results suggest that complex neutral episodic memories can retroactively acquire an affective tone, but the effects were modest and inconsistent across affect readouts. Future research should investigate alternative approaches to updating emotional memories that produce more profound changes in the valence of memories., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

What are the boundaries that limit expansion of semantic knowledge across development? One striking contender is the necessity of a prompt to integrate and self-generate new information. The present research was an investigation of 7–9-year-olds' and 18–22-year-olds' prompted versus unprompted memory integration and subsequent self-derivation of new knowledge. Children and adults (Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) were exposed to sets of novel, true facts that could be integrated to self-derive new knowledge. On some trials they were prompted to integrate and self-derive and on others they were not. Both children and young adults capitalized more effectively on prompted opportunities to self-derive compared with unprompted opportunities, and the mechanism of this difference in performance likely underlies memory integration. Thus, the current work illustrates the importance of the conditions under which memory integration occurs, regardless of age. Results also offer evidence consistent with developmental change in unprompted integration and self-derivation performance, such that children and adults may engage the process of self-derivation differently. This work is particularly important in highlighting the necessity of appropriate scaffolding to foster successful learning opportunities and understanding the conditions under which semantic knowledge is accumulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is crucial to identify cognitive mechanisms that support knowledge growth. One such mechanism that is known to improve learning outcomes is generative processing: the construction of novel information beyond what is directly taught. In this study of college students, we investigate the learning outcomes associated with the generative process of self-derivation through integration , the integration of multiple related facts to generate novel information. We compare the effects of self-derivation versus an active rephrase control condition on retrieval, application, and organization of neuroscience classroom content. In the self-derivation condition, learners were prompted to generate inferences based on integration of two explicitly-taught facts. In the rephrase condition, learners were explicitly provided these inferences and asked to rephrase them. We found few overall differences between learning manipulation conditions. However, we found that, regardless of the learning manipulation condition to which learners were exposed, learners generated their own information on some trials. This generation predicted success on retrieval and application of learned information. Further, self-derivation, when successful, led to particularly high rates of retrieval when compared with active rephrase. These findings inform theory on generative processing, and demonstrate that self-derivation is a mechanism of knowledge growth that may be useful for retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a chronic and disabling condition that affects approximately 10% of non-traumatically bereaved people. Narrative reconstruction (NR), originally designed for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is a time-limited integrative therapy consisting of exposure to the loss memory, detailed written reconstruction of the loss memory narrative, and an elaboration of the personal significance of that memory for the bereaved. Objective: This pilot study examined the efficacy of NR therapy in reducing symptoms in bereaved people diagnosed with PGD. Method: Ten PGD patients participated in the study and were treated with 16 weekly sessions of NR. PGD, PTSD, and depression symptoms, as well as levels of loss integration, were assessed at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at a 3-month follow-up. Results: Following NR, participants showed significant reductions in PGD, depression, and PTSD symptoms, and elevated levels of trauma integration. Symptoms showed further improvement at the three-month follow-up. Conclusions: These findings provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility and efficacy of NR in treating PGD. Narrative reconstruction therapy requires further evaluation in randomized controlled trials.

Background: Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a chronic and disabling condition that affects approximately 10% of non-traumatically bereaved people. Narrative reconstruction (NR), originally designed for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is a time-limited integrative therapy consisting of exposure to the loss memory, detailed written reconstruction of the loss memory narrative, and an elaboration of the personal significance of that memory for the bereaved. Objective: This pilot study examined the efficacy of NR therapy in reducing symptoms in bereaved people diagnosed with PGD. Method: Ten PGD patients participated in the study and were treated with 16 weekly sessions of NR. PGD, PTSD, and depression symptoms, as well as levels of loss integration, were assessed at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at a 3-month follow-up. Results: Following NR, participants showed significant reductions in PGD, depression, and PTSD symptoms, and elevated levels of trauma integration. Symptoms showed further improvement at the three-month follow-up. Conclusions: These findings provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility and efficacy of NR in treating PGD. Narrative reconstruction therapy requires further evaluation in randomized controlled trials. NR consists of exposure through written reconstruction of the loss and elaboration of its significance. NR reduced PGD and depression and increased loss integration improving further at the follow-up. Findings provide preliminary evidence for the efficacy of NR in treating PGD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Event memories are characterized by the holistic retrieval of their constituent elements. Studies show that memory for individual event elements (e.g. person, object and location) are statistically related to each other, and that the same associative memory structure can be formed by learning all pairwise associations across separated encoding contexts (person–object, person–location, object–location). Counter to previous studies that have shown no differences in holistic retrieval between simultaneously and separately encoded event elements, adults did not show evidence of holistic retrieval from separately encoded event elements when using a similar paradigm adapted for children (Experiment 1). We conducted a further five online experiments to explore the conditions under which holistic retrieval emerges following separated encoding of within-event associations, testing for influences of trial length (Experiment 2), the number of events learned (Experiment 3a) and stimulus presentation format (Experiments 3b, 4a, 4b). Presentation of written words was optimal for integrating elements across encoding trials, whereas the addition of spoken words disrupted integration across separately presented associations. The use of picture stimuli also produced effect sizes smaller than those of previously published research. We discuss the ways in which memory integration processes may be disrupted by these differences in presentation format. The findings have practical implications for the utility of this paradigm across research and learning contexts.

Several decades of research have established that different kinds of memories result from the activity of discrete neural networks. Studying how these networks process information in experiments that target specific types of mnemonic representations has provided deep insights into memory architecture and its neural underpinnings. However, in natural settings reality confronts organisms with problems that are not neatly compartmentalized. Thus, a critical problem in memory research that still needs to be addressed is how distinct types of memories are ultimately integrated. Here we demonstrate how two memory networks, the hippocampus and dorsolateral striatum, may accomplish such a goal. The hippocampus supports memory for facts and events, collectively known as declarative memory and often studied as spatial memory in rodents. The dorsolateral striatum provides the basis for habits that are assessed in stimulus-response types of tasks. Expanding previous findings, the current work revealed that in male Long-Evans rats, the hippocampus and dorsolateral striatum use time and space in distinct and largely complementary ways to integrate spatial and habitual representations. Specifically, the hippocampus supported both types of memories when they were formed in temporal juxtaposition, even if the learning took place in different environments. In contrast, the lateral striatum supported both types of memories if they were formed in the same environment, even at temporally distinct points. These results reveal for the first time that by using fundamental aspects of experience in specific ways, the hippocampus and dorsolateral striatum can transcend their attributed roles in information storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While navigating the world, we pick up on patterns of where things tend to appear. According to theories of memory and studies of animal behavior, knowledge of these patterns emerges gradually over days or weeks via consolidation of individual navigation episodes. Here, we discovered that navigation patterns can also be extracted on-line, prior to the opportunity for off-line consolidation, as a result of rapid statistical learning. Thirty human participants navigated a virtual water maze in which platform locations were drawn from a spatial distribution. Within a single session, participants increasingly navigated through the mean of the distribution. This behavior was better simulated by random walks from a model that had only an explicit representation of the current mean, compared with a model that had only memory for the individual platform locations. These results suggest that participants rapidly summarized the underlying spatial distribution and used this statistical knowledge to guide future navigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our lives are a continuous stream of experience. Our episodic memories on the other hand have a definitive beginning, middle, and end. Theories of event segmentation suggest that salient changes in our environment produce event boundaries which partition the past from the present and, as a result, produce discretized memories. However, event boundaries cannot completely discretize two memories; any shared conceptual link will lead to the rapid integration of these memories. Here, we present a new framework inspired by electrophysiological research that resolves this apparent contradiction. At its heart, the framework proposes that hippocampal theta‐gamma coupling maintains a highly abstract model of an ongoing event and serves to encode this model as an episodic memory. When a second but related event begins, this theta‐gamma model is rapidly reconstructed within the hippocampus where new details of the second event can be appended to the existing event model. The event conjunction framework is the first electrophysiological explanation of how event memories can be formed at, and integrated across, event boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In daily life, we often make decisions based on relative value of the options, and we often derive these values from segmenting or integrating the outcomes of past episodes in memory. The neural correlates involved in value-based decision-making have been extensively studied in the literature, but few studies have investigated this topic in decisions that require segmenting or integrating episodic memory from related sources, and even fewer studies examine it in the context of spatial navigation. Building on the computational models from our previous studies, the current study investigates the neural substrates involved in decisions that require people either segment or integrate wayfinding outcomes involving different goals, across virtual spatial navigation tasks with differing demands. We find that when decisions require computation of spatial distances for navigation options, but also evaluation of one's prior spatial navigation ability with the task, the estimated value of navigational choices (EV) modulates neural activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal (dmPFC) cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal (vlFPC) cortex. However, superior parietal cortex tracked EV when decision-making tasks only require spatial distance memory but not evaluation of spatial navigation ability. Our findings reveal divergent neural substrates of memory integration in value-based decision-making under different spatial processing demands. • We investigated the neural substrates in decision-making (DM) involving memory integration in a navigational context. • Each participant finished with three DM tasks, varied by different computational components necessary for the decision. • When computation of distance and navigation ability was required, the estimated value (EV) was tracked by dmPFC and vlFPC. • When decisions only required computation of distance, EV was tracked by the superior parietal cortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-derivation through memory integration is the cognitive process of generating new knowledge by integrating individual facts. Across two studies, we longitudinally examined developmental change, individual stability, and relations with academic performance in a diverse agricultural community. We documented children's self-derivation in their classrooms and examined the relation with self-derivation and academic performance a year later. In Study 1, we examined self-derivation (n = 94; M age = 6.67; initially grades K and 1) using the same paradigm at both time points. We found evidence of developmental change from Time 1 to Time 2. However, self-derivation accounted for a small portion of the variance in self-derivation (reflecting individual stability) and academic performance measured one year later. In Study 2, we examined self-derivation across two different paradigms with children beginning in Grades 2 and 3 (n = 82; M age = 8.60). Even across paradigms, we found evidence for individual stability. Year 1 self-derivation also predicted Year 2 academic performance. We posit that self-derivation through integration is a domain-general construct related to academic performance. • Self-derivation through memory integration shows developmental change over one year similar to cross-sectional studies. • Self-derivation through memory integration is individually stable over a one-year period. • Self-derivation through memory integration predicts academic performance one year later in both reading and math. • The results indicate that self-derivation through memory integration is a domain-general process contributing to learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a stimulus never associated with danger become frightening? The present study addressed this question using a sensory preconditioning task with rats. In this task, rats integrate a sound-light memory formed in stage 1 with a light-danger memory formed in stage 2, as they show fear when tested with the sound in stage 3. Here we show that this integration occurs ‘online’ during stage 2: when activity in the region that consolidated the sound-light memory (perirhinal cortex) was inhibited during formation of the light-danger memory, rats no longer showed fear when tested with the sound but continued to fear the light. Thus, fear that accrues to a stimulus paired with danger simultaneously spreads to its past associates, thereby roping those associates into a fear memory network.

In the present review, we provide evidence indicating that although post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder (SUD) are two distinct pathologies with very different impacts on people affected by these chronic illnesses, they share numerous common characteristics, present high rates of co-morbidity, and may result from common physiological dysfunctions. We propose that these pathologies result from hyper reactivity to reminders, and thus should be considered as two disorders of memory, treated as such. We review the different possibilities to intervene on pathological memories such as extinction therapy and reconsolidation blockade. We also introduce new therapeutic avenues directly indicate by our recent proposal to replace the consolidation/reconsolidation hypothesis by the integration concept. State dependency and emotional remodeling are two innovative treatments that have already provided encouraging results. In summary, this review shows that the discovery of reactivation-dependent memory malleability has open new therapeutic avenues based on the reprocessing of pathological memories, which constitute promising approaches to treat PTSD and SUD.

Stress can powerfully influence the way we form memories, particularly the extent to which they are integrated or situated within an underlying spatiotemporal and broader knowledge architecture. These different representations in turn have significant consequences for the way we use these memories to guide later behavior. Puzzlingly, although stress has historically been argued to promote fragmentation, leading to disjoint memory representations, more recent work suggests that stress can also facilitate memory binding and integration. Understanding the circumstances under which stress fosters integration will be key to resolving this discrepancy and unpacking the mechanisms by which stress can shape later behavior. Here, we examine memory integration at multiple levels: linking together the content of an individual experience, threading associations between related but distinct events, and binding an experience into a pre-existing schema or sense of causal structure. We discuss neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying each form of integration as well as findings regarding how stress, aversive learning, and negative affect can modulate each. In this analysis, we uncover that stress can indeed promote each level of integration. We also show how memory integration may apply to understanding effects of alcohol, highlighting extant clinical and preclinical findings and opportunities for further investigation. Finally, we consider the implications of integration and fragmentation for later memory-guided behavior, and the importance of understanding which type of memory representation is potentiated in order to design appropriate interventions., Competing Interests: None, (© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Theories of reconstructive memory have long been influenced by investigations of false recognition errors, in which old/new judgements are compromised by spontaneous activation of associated but nonpresented concepts. Recent evidence similarly suggests that reconstructive memory processes (so-called memory integration) also support positive learning behaviors, such as inferential reasoning. Despite prevailing hypotheses, the question of whether a common integration process underlies these seemingly disparate mnemonic outcomes is not well understood. To address this question, young adults, recruited from two institutions, completed the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (Deese, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17–22, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803–814, 1995) and Bransford and Franks (Cognitive Psychology, 2, 331–350, 1971) false recognition paradigms, as well as an inferential paradigm (Varga & Bauer, Memory & Cognition, 45, 1014–1027, 2017b), all of which depend on integration of related information in memory. Across two experiments, the well-established tasks were adapted such that successful memory integration resulted in the same negative outcome (i.e., false recognition; Experiment 1) or positive outcome (i.e., inferential reasoning; Experiment 2). By capturing variability in item-to-item responding within and among tasks for each person, a common memory integration process was found to elicit positive and negative consequences in paradigms that required the combination of individual units to construct a composite understanding, but only when memory for directly learned and novel, integrated items were modeled together. Furthermore, linking task-related behavior to academic performance revealed that a greater propensity to integrate factual information (but not arbitrary materials) was related to higher SAT scores. Together, these results provide evidence for domain-general and domain-specific reconstructive mechanisms and their role in supporting educational success beyond the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present review, we provide evidence indicating that although post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder (SUD) are two distinct pathologies with very different impacts on people affected by these chronic illnesses, they share numerous common characteristics, present high rates of co-morbidity, and may result from common physiological dysfunctions. We propose that these pathologies result from hyper reactivity to reminders, and thus should be considered as two disorders of memory, treated as such. We review the different possibilities to intervene on pathological memories such as extinction therapy and reconsolidation blockade. We also introduce new therapeutic avenues directly indicate by our recent proposal to replace the consolidation/reconsolidation hypothesis by the integration concept. State dependency and emotional remodeling are two innovative treatments that have already provided encouraging results. In summary, this review shows that the discovery of reactivation-dependent memory malleability has open new therapeutic avenues based on the reprocessing of pathological memories, which constitute promising approaches to treat PTSD and SUD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accumulation of knowledge relies in part on self-derivation of new semantic knowledge through integration of separate yet related learning episodes. Prior research suggests that individual and developmental variability in self-derivation is due to differences in the precursor processes of encoding, reactivation, and integration. In the present research, we examined a fourth potential precursor process: selection of learning episodes most relevant to the target self-derived knowledge. In two experiments, we examined selection of information most relevant to self-derivation in 8-year-olds (Experiments 1 and 2) and 12-year-olds (Experiment 2). Both age groups self-derived even when there were several candidate facts from which to select. Older children had higher levels of self-derivation performance and made more correct selections than younger children. Within and across age groups, selection performance significantly predicted trial-level self-derivation success. These data provide evidence that selection of facts necessary for self-derivation contributes to the robust variability observed in self-derivation. • The work examines selection of relevant facts and self-derivation in children. • 8- and 12-year-olds self-derive in both high- and low-selection demand conditions. • Children were more likely to self-derive if they selected at least 1 relevant fact. • Selection of relevant facts contributes to age-related and individual differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Familiarity incrementally improves our ability to identify faces. It has been hypothesized that this improvement reflects the refinement of memory representations which incorporate variation in appearance across encounters. Although it is established that exposure to variation improves face identification accuracy, it is not clear how variation is assimilated into internal face representations. To address this, we used a novel approach to isolate the effect of integrating separate exposures into a single-identity representation. Participants (n = 113) were exposed to either a single video clip or a pair of video clips of target identities. Pairs of video clips were presented as either a single identity (associated with a single name, e.g. Betty-Sue) or dual identities (associated with two names, e.g. Betty and Sue). Results show that participants exposed to pairs of video clips showed better matching performance compared with participants trained with a single clip. More importantly, identification accuracy was higher for faces presented as single identities compared to faces presented as dual identities. This provides the first direct evidence that the integration of information across separate exposures benefits face matching, thereby establishing a mechanism that may explain people's impressive ability to recognize familiar faces.

How does the hippocampus represent interrelated experiences in memory? We review prominent yet seemingly contradictory theoretical perspectives, which propose that the hippocampus distorts experiential representations to either emphasize their distinctiveness or highlight common elements. These fundamentally different kinds of memory representations may be instantiated in the brain via conjunctive separated codes and adaptively differentiated codes on the one hand, or integrated relational codes on the other. After reviewing empirical support for these different coding schemes within the hippocampus, we outline two organizing principles which may explain the conflicting findings in the literature. First focusing on where the memories are formed and stored, we argue that distinct hippocampal regions represent experiences at multiple levels of abstraction and may transmit them to distinct cortical networks. Then focusing on when memories are formed, we identify several factors that can open and maintain specialized time windows, during which the very same hippocampal network is biased toward one coding scheme over the others. Specifically, we discuss evidence for (1) excitability-mediated integration windows, maintained by persistently elevated CREB levels following encoding of a specific memory, (2) fleeting cholinergically-mediated windows favoring memory separation, and (3) sustained dopaminergically-mediated windows favoring memory integration. By presenting a broad overview of different hippocampal coding schemes across species, we hope to inspire future empirical and modeling research to consider how factors surrounding memory formation shape the representations in which they are stored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to flexibly combine existing knowledge in response to novel circumstances is highly adaptive. However, the neural correlates of flexible associative inference are not well characterized. Laboratory tests of associative inference have measured memory for overlapping pairs of studied items (e.g., AB, BC) and for nonstudied pairs with common associates (i.e., AC). Findings from functional neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggest the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) may be necessary for associative inference. Here, we used a neuropsychological approach to test the necessity of vmPFC for successful memory-guided associative inference in humans using an overlapping pairs associative memory task. We predicted that individuals with focal vmPFC damage (n = 5; 3F, 2M) would show impaired inferential memory but intact non-inferential memory. Performance was compared with normal comparison participants (n = 10; 6F, 4M). Participants studied pairs of visually presented objects including overlapping pairs (AB, BC) and nonoverlapping pairs (XY). Participants later completed a three-alternative forced-choice recognition task for studied pairs (AB, BC, XY) and inference pairs (AC). As predicted, the vmPFC group had intact memory for studied pairs but significantly impaired memory for inferential pairs. These results are consistent with the perspective that the vmPFC is necessary for memory-guided associative inference, indicating that the vmPFC is critical for adaptive abilities that require application of existing knowledge to novel circumstances. Additionally, vmPFC damage was associated with unexpectedly reduced memory for AB pairs post-inference, which could potentially reflect retroactive interference. Together, these results reinforce an emerging understanding of a role for the vmPFC in brain networks supporting associative memory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive behavior frequently depends on inference from past experience. Recent studies suggest that the underlying process of integrating related memories may depend on interaction between hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Here, we investigated how hippocampal damage affects memory integration. Subjects with mediotemporal lesions and healthy controls learned a set of overlapping AB- and BC-associations (object-face- and face-object pairs) and were then tested for memory of these associations ('direct' trials) and of inferential AC-associations ('indirect' trials). The experiment consisted of four encoding/retrieval cycles. In direct trials, performance of patients and controls was similar and stable across cycles. By contrast, in indirect trials, patients and controls showed distinct patterns of behavior. Whereas patients and controls initially showed only minor differences, controls increased performance across subsequent cycles, while patient performance decreased to chance level. Further analysis suggested that this deficit was not merely a consequence of impaired associative memory but rather resulted from an additional hippocampal contribution to memory integration. Our findings further suggest that contextual factors modulate this contribution. Patient deficits in more complex memory-guided behavior may depend on the flexible interaction of hippocampus-dependent and -independent mechanisms of memory integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]