The Hippocampus Generalizes across Memories that Share Item and Context Information
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Abstract
Episodic memory is known to rely on the hippocampus, but how the hippocampus organizes different episodes to permit their subsequent retrieval remains controversial. One major area of debate hinges on a discrepancy between two hypothesized roles of the hippocampus: differentiating between similar events to reduce interference and assigning similar representations to events that share overlapping items and contextual information. Here, we used multivariate analyses of activity patterns measured with fMRI to characterize how the hippocampus distinguishes between memories based on similarity at the level of items and/or context. Hippocampal activity patterns discriminated between events that shared either item or context information but generalized across events that shared similar item–context associations. The current findings provide evidence that, whereas the hippocampus can reduce mnemonic interference by separating events that generalize along a single attribute dimension, overlapping hippocampal codes may support memory for events with overlapping item–context relations. This lends new insights into the way the hippocampus may balance multiple mnemonic operations in adaptively guiding behavior.
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Human HPC representations for context-item associations accumulated over multiple learning trials generalize across events that share similar item-context associations.
“Human HPC representations for context-item associations that are accumulated over multiple learning trials also seem to generalize across events that share similar item-context associations 79 .”
From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [79]
Multivoxel pattern similarity analyses in a recent fMRI study showed that HPC responses to items that share a similar context are more likely to occur in overlapping regions than responses to items that do not share a context.
“Multivoxel pattern similarity analyses in a recent fMRI study in which participants learned item-context associations showed that HPC responses to items that share a similar context, a likely requisite for schema formation, are more likely to occur in overlapping regions than responses to items that do not share a context 79 .”
From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [79]
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From cognitive maps to spatial schemas
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- Authors
- Libby, L. A., Reagh, Z. M., Bouffard, N. R., Ragland, J. D., & Ranganath, C.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- University of California, Davis
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press
- Published
- 2019-01
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 24-35
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- PMC
- PMC7217712
- OpenAlex
- W2950788294
- Cited by
- 42
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 2.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Defense
- National Institute on Aging (P30AG010129, T32AG050061)
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH105411, R01MH083734)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Keywords
- hippocampus, episodic memory, memory retrieval, memory interference, memory generalization
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Memory, Mental Recall, Young Adult, Memory, Long-Term, Memory, Episodic
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