The essential experimental protocol employed on this examine. Credit score: Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00250-5
Most people can recall particular occasions and previous experiences for lengthy durations of time. This functionality, known as episodic reminiscence, is understood to be in nice half supported by the exercise of neurons within the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe.
Previous neuroscience and psychology research constantly discovered that episodic reminiscence is associative. This primarily implies that remembering one previous occasion, as an illustration a commencement, can in lots of instances immediate folks to additionally keep in mind different associated occasions, similar to a celebration that celebrated the commencement.
Researchers at Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIByNE)-CONICET and the College of Buenos Aires just lately carried out a brand new examine exploring the chance that the reactivation of particular episodic reminiscences doesn’t solely assist to strengthen these reminiscences, but in addition the reminiscences of different associated occasions or experiences.
Their findings, revealed in Communications Psychology, recommend that consolidated episodic reminiscences will also be not directly strengthened when individuals are remembering different occasions which can be contextually sure to those reminiscences.
“Memory reactivation has been shown to strengthen reactivated memories, but its effects on related, non-reactivated memories remain unclear,” wrote Juan Cruz Beron, Luz Bavassi and their colleagues of their paper. “This study investigated whether reactivation of a consolidated target memory could indirectly enhance the retention of peripheral information acquired in the same context.”
Most earlier research investigating the activation of associated reminiscences particularly targeted on reminiscences that haven’t but been consolidated, which primarily implies that they’re comparatively new and haven’t been stabilized within the mind for long-term storage. In distinction, Beron, Bavassi and their colleagues wished to find out whether or not reminiscences which can be already consolidated could be strengthened additional when individuals are recalling contextually associated reminiscences.
“We hypothesized that reactivating a consolidated target memory would improve its retention and strengthen contextually associated memories,” wrote the researchers. “To test this, we conducted four experiments in which participants first learned face-name pairs (target memory) alongside everyday objects (peripheral memory).”
The researchers carried out a four-day experiment involving a complete of 238 grownup individuals. On the primary day, all individuals have been requested to study associations between faces and names, in addition to a set of on a regular basis objects.
On day 2, a subset of the individuals accomplished a process that was designed to reactivate the reminiscences they made the day earlier than, by presenting them with incomplete reminders of those reminiscences. Concurrently, the remainder of the individuals carried out an unrelated management process.
On the third day, the researchers assessed the flexibility of each subsets of individuals to recollect each the goal (i.e., face-name pairs) and peripheral (objects) info memorized throughout the first stage of the experiment. Notably, they discovered that individuals who have been within the reminiscence re-activation situation on day 2 of the experiment remembered each the forms of stimuli higher than these within the management situation.
“Results revealed that reactivation significantly improved the retention of target and peripheral memories when acquired in the same context,” wrote the researchers. “Nonetheless, when peripheral reminiscences have been realized in a special context, reactivation of the goal reminiscence didn’t produce the identical oblique strengthening impact.
“These findings suggest that the indirect strengthening of consolidated memories through reactivation is context-dependent and may rely on the shared spatiotemporal acquisition context.”
General, the findings of this latest examine provide new beneficial perception into the mechanisms of episodic reminiscence re-activation. This perception may encourage different analysis teams to analyze the newly unveiled re-activation mechanisms, which may additional enhance our understanding of human reminiscence processes.
Extra info:
Juan Cruz Beron et al, Proof for oblique strengthening by way of reactivation of contextually sure reminiscences, Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00250-5
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Reactivation of particular reminiscences can not directly strengthen associated ones, examine finds (2025, Might 23)
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