Speed of time-compressed forward replay flexibly changes in human episodic memory

Michelmann, S., Staresina, B. P., Bowman, H. and Hanslmayr, S. (2019) Speed of time-compressed forward replay flexibly changes in human episodic memory. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(2), pp. 143-154. (doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0491-4) (PMID:30944439)

Abstract

Remembering information from continuous past episodes is a complex task1. On the one hand, we must be able to recall events in a highly accurate way, often including exact timings. On the other hand, we can ignore irrelevant details and skip to events of interest. Here, we track continuous episodes consisting of different subevents as they are recalled from memory. In behavioural and magnetoencephalography data, we show that memory replay is temporally compressed and proceeds in a forward direction. Neural replay is characterized by the reinstatement of temporal patterns from encoding2,3. These fragments of activity reappear on a compressed timescale. Herein, the replay of subevents takes longer than the transition from one subevent to another. This identifies episodic memory replay as a dynamic process in which participants replay fragments of fine-grained temporal patterns and are able to skip flexibly across subevents.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Hanslmayr, Professor Simon
• Authors: Michelmann, S., Staresina, B. P., Bowman, H., and Hanslmayr, S.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
• Journal Name: Nature Human Behaviour
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 2397-3374
• ISSN (Online): 2397-3374
• Published Online: 17 December 2018
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature Human Behaviour 3(2): 143-154
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy