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Can memory representations in parietal cortex be predicted from perceptual representations in sensory cortex?

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Zhifang Ye¹ (zhifangy@uoregon.edu), Tongle Cai¹, J. Benjamin Hutchinson¹, Brice A. Kuhl¹; ¹University of Oregon

Remembering an event from the past involves reactivation of neural activity patterns initially evoked during the perceptual experience of that event. However, measurements of reactivation only test for the match between perception and memory retrieval, effectively treating any differences as noise. In contrast, recent neuroimaging studies have revealed systematic differences in how the brain represents perceptual experiences and memories. In particular, whereas sensory areas exhibit stronger representations during perception than memory, parietal cortex exhibits an opposite bias. In the proposed study, we aim to conduct a large-scale, well-powered fMRI experiment with the goal of developing a ‘transfer function’ such that memory representations in parietal cortex can be predicted from perceptual representations in sensory cortex. Each participant (planned n = 30) will be scanned for 8 sessions and will perceive and remember 560 unique stimuli. During perception trials, participants will view 3-second video clips. During associative learning (not scanned), participants will learn associations between words and videos. During memory recall, participants will be presented with a word and asked to recall the associated video as vividly as possible. The overarching goal of this study is to develop a cross-validated model that learns a perception-to-memory transformation function. In a smaller-scale pilot experiment with a similar design, we demonstrated successful prediction of memory representations in the lateral parietal cortex from perception representations in the visual cortex. Replicating and extending this finding in a larger study will provide a foundation to better understand systematic differences between perceptual and mnemonic representations.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic