The Emergence of Knowledge and How it Supports the Memory for Novel Related Information

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Emergence of Knowledge and How it Supports the Memory for Novel Related Information

AU - Sommer-Blöchl, Tobias

N1 - © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

PY - 2017/3/1

Y1 - 2017/3/1

N2 - Current theories suggest that memories for novel information and events, over time and with repeated retrieval, lose the association to their initial learning context. They are consolidated into a more stable form and transformed into semantic knowledge, that is, semanticized. Novel, related information can then be rapidly integrated into such knowledge, leading to superior memory. We tested these hypotheses in a longitudinal, 302-day, human functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants first overlearned and consolidated associative structures. This phase was associated with a shift from hippocampal- to ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC)-mediated retrieval, consistent with semanticization. Next, participants encoded novel, related information whose encoding into the already acquired knowledge was orchestrated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Novel related information exhibited reduced forgetting compared with novel control information, which corresponded to a faster shift from hippocampal- to vlPFC-mediated retrieval. In sum, the current results suggest that memory for novel information can be enhanced by anchoring it to prior knowledge via acceleration of the processes observed during semanticization.

AB - Current theories suggest that memories for novel information and events, over time and with repeated retrieval, lose the association to their initial learning context. They are consolidated into a more stable form and transformed into semantic knowledge, that is, semanticized. Novel, related information can then be rapidly integrated into such knowledge, leading to superior memory. We tested these hypotheses in a longitudinal, 302-day, human functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants first overlearned and consolidated associative structures. This phase was associated with a shift from hippocampal- to ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC)-mediated retrieval, consistent with semanticization. Next, participants encoded novel, related information whose encoding into the already acquired knowledge was orchestrated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Novel related information exhibited reduced forgetting compared with novel control information, which corresponded to a faster shift from hippocampal- to vlPFC-mediated retrieval. In sum, the current results suggest that memory for novel information can be enhanced by anchoring it to prior knowledge via acceleration of the processes observed during semanticization.

U2 - 10.1093/cercor/bhw031

DO - 10.1093/cercor/bhw031

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 26908636

VL - 27

SP - 1906

EP - 1921

JO - CEREB CORTEX

JF - CEREB CORTEX

SN - 1047-3211

IS - 3

ER -