Liu Jing, Zhang Hui, Yu Tao, Ren Liankun, Ni Duanyu, Yang Qinhao, Lu Baoqing, Zhang Liang, Axmacher Nikolai, Xue Gui
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Department of Neuropsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum 44801, Germany.
Sci Adv. 2021 Oct 8;7(41):eabg9715. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abg9715.
Memory is often conceived as a dynamic process that involves substantial transformations of mental representations. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these transformations and their role in memory formation and retrieval have only started to be elucidated. Combining intracranial EEG recordings with deep neural network models, we provide a detailed picture of the representational transformations from encoding to short-term memory maintenance and long-term memory retrieval that underlie successful episodic memory. We observed substantial representational transformations during encoding. Critically, more pronounced semantic representational formats predicted better subsequent long-term memory, and this effect was mediated by more consistent item-specific representations across encoding events. The representations were further transformed right after stimulus offset, and the representations during long-term memory retrieval were more similar to those during short-term maintenance than during encoding. Our results suggest that memory representations pass through multiple stages of transformations to achieve successful long-term memory formation and recall.
记忆通常被视为一个动态过程，涉及心理表征的大量转变。然而，这些转变背后的神经机制及其在记忆形成和检索中的作用才刚刚开始得到阐明。通过将颅内脑电图记录与深度神经网络模型相结合，我们详细描绘了从编码到短期记忆维持以及长期记忆检索的表征转变，这些转变是成功的情景记忆的基础。我们观察到编码过程中存在大量的表征转变。至关重要的是，更明显的语义表征形式预示着更好的后续长期记忆，并且这种效应是由编码事件中更一致的特定项目表征介导的。刺激消失后，表征进一步转变，与编码期间相比，长期记忆检索期间的表征与短期维持期间的表征更相似。我们的结果表明，记忆表征要经过多个转变阶段才能实现成功的长期记忆形成和回忆。
