Morales-Calva Fernanda, Leal Stephanie L
Department of Psychological Sciences, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
Department of Integrative Biology & Physiology, UCLA, 621 Charles E Young Dr S, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Feb;25(1):6-24. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01234-4. Epub 2024 Oct 25.
Endel Tulving defined episodic memory as consisting of a spatiotemporal context. It enables us to recollect personal experiences of people, things, places, and situations. In other words, it is made up of what, where, and when components. However, this definition does not include arguably the most important aspect of episodic memory: the why. Understanding why we remember has important implications to better understand how our memory system works and as a potential target of intervention for memory impairment. The intrinsic and extrinsic factors related to why some experiences are better remembered than others have been widely investigated but largely independently studied. How these factors interact with one another to drive an event to become a lasting memory is still unknown. This review summarizes research examining the why of episodic memory, where we aim to uncover the factors that drive core features of our memory. We discuss the concept of episodic memory examining the what, where, and when, and how the why is essential to each of these key components of episodic memory. Furthermore, we discuss the neural mechanisms known to support our rich episodic memories and how a why signal may provide critical modulatory impact on neural activity and communication. Finally, we discuss the individual differences that may further drive why we remember certain experiences over others. A better understanding of these elements, and how we experience memory in daily life, can elucidate why we remember what we remember, providing important insight into the overarching goal of our memory system.
恩德尔·托尔文将情景记忆定义为由时空背景构成。它使我们能够回忆起关于人、事、地点和情景的个人经历。换句话说，它由“什么”“哪里”和“何时”这些要素组成。然而，这个定义可能没有涵盖情景记忆中最重要的方面：“为什么”。理解我们为什么会记住某些事情，对于更好地理解我们的记忆系统如何运作以及作为记忆障碍的潜在干预靶点具有重要意义。与为什么有些经历比其他经历更容易被记住相关的内在和外在因素已经得到了广泛研究，但大多是独立进行的。这些因素如何相互作用以促使一个事件成为持久记忆仍然未知。这篇综述总结了关于情景记忆中“为什么”的研究，我们旨在揭示驱动我们记忆核心特征的因素。我们讨论了情景记忆中关于“什么”“哪里”和“何时”的概念，以及“为什么”对于情景记忆的这些关键组成部分中的每一个是如何至关重要的。此外，我们讨论了已知支持我们丰富情景记忆的神经机制，以及一个“为什么”信号如何可能对神经活动和交流提供关键的调节作用。最后，我们讨论了可能进一步促使我们记住某些经历而非其他经历的个体差异。更好地理解这些要素，以及我们在日常生活中如何体验记忆，可以阐明我们为什么会记住我们所记住的事情，为我们记忆系统的总体目标提供重要的见解。
