Reconsolidation of episodic memories: a subtle reminder triggers integration of new information.

By Almut Hupbach, Rebecca L. Gómez, Oliver Hardt, Lynn Nadel. 2007

562 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent demonstrations of "reconsolidation" suggest that memories can be modified when they are reactivated. Reconsolidation has been observed in human procedural memory and in implicit memory in infants. This study asks whether episodic memory undergoes reconsolidation. College students learned a list of objects on Day 1. On Day 2, they received a reminder or not, and then learned a second list. Memory for List 1 was tested immediately on Day 2 (Experiment 2) or on Day 3 (Experiment 1). Although the reminder did not moderate the number of items recalled from List 1 on either day, subjects who received a reminder incorrectly intermixed items from the second list when recalling List 1 on Day 3. Experiment 2 showed that this effect does not occur immediately and thus is time-dependent. The reminder did not affect memory for List 2 on Day 3 (Experiment 3), demonstrating that modification occurred only for the original memory (List 1). The study demonstrates the crucial role of reminders for the modification of episodic memory, that reconsolidation of episodic memory is time-dependent, and, in contrast to previous reconsolidation findings, that reconsolidation is also a constructive process, one that supports the incorporation of new information in memory.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Meta-Consolidation for Continual Learning (2020, background): “Hence, the brain operates in an online manner, where it is able to adapt itself to continuously changing data distributions without losing grasp of its previously acquired knowledge [33].”
Neural reactivation in parietal cortex enhances memory for episodically linked information (2018, methodology): “4F, analyses of these data revealed greater pattern similarity during retrieval compared with restudy, F(1, 27) = 10.”
The restless engram: consolidations never end. (2012, background): “At the brain physiology level, Huber et al. (2004) reported that activity in SWS has a local component that can be triggered by a sensorimotor adaptation task that involves specific brain regions.”
A single standard for memory: the case for reconsolidation (2009, background): “2), such as object recognition [51]; instrumental learning [104]; IA [3, 71]; motor sequence learning [128]; incentive learning [129]; habituation [100]; memories of drug reward [62, 72, 125]; and now, for the first time, episodic memories [49].”
Are episodic memories special? On the sameness of remembered and imagined event simulation (2018, background): “…time because during retrieval, the reactivated representation becomes temporarily labile (and thus modifiable) before it is reconsolidated (e.g. Hupbach et al. 2007); a related concept is re-encoding, whereby the reactivated memory as well as one’s internal and external context are encoded as…”
Molecular mechanisms of memory reconsolidation (2007, background): “Updating memories might involve the incorporation of new information (such as context”
Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms (2009, background): “This is based on the premise that reconsolidation is an adaptive update mechanism by which new information is incorporated into old memories 3,7,8 .”