LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Survival of the salient: Aversive learning rescues otherwise forgettable memories via neural reactivation and post-encoding hippocampal connectivity

Photo from wikipedia

The effects of aversive events on memory are complex and go beyond the simple enhancement of threatening stimuli in memory. Negative experiences can also rescue related but otherwise forgettable details… Click to show full abstract

The effects of aversive events on memory are complex and go beyond the simple enhancement of threatening stimuli in memory. Negative experiences can also rescue related but otherwise forgettable details encoded close in time. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in healthy young adults to examine the brain mechanisms that support this retrograde memory effect. In a two-phase incidental encoding paradigm, participants viewed different pictures of tools and animals before and during Pavlovian fear conditioning. During Phase 1, these images were intermixed with neutral scenes, which provided a unique 'context tag' for this specific phase of encoding. A few minutes later, during Phase 2, new pictures from one category were paired with a mild shock (threat-conditioned stimulus; CS+), while pictures from the other category were not shocked. FMRI analyses revealed that, across-participants, individuals who showed aversive learning-related retroactive memory benefits for Phase 1 CS+ items were also more likely to exhibit three brain effects: first, greater spontaneous reinstatement of the Phase 1 context when participants viewed conceptually-related CS+ items in Phase 2; second, greater successful encoding-related VTA/SN and LC activation for Phase 2 CS+ items; and third, learning-dependent increases in post-encoding hippocampal functional coupling with CS+ category-selective cortex. These biases in hippocampal-cortical connectivity also mediated the relationship between VTA/SN aversive encoding effects and across-participant variability in the retroactive memory benefit. Collectively, our findings suggest that both online and offline brain mechanisms may enable threatening events to preserve memories that acquire new significance in the future.

Keywords: phase; encoding hippocampal; otherwise forgettable; memory; aversive learning; post encoding

Journal Title: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Year Published: 2022

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.