We often reflect on our past to understand current experience or predict future events. For example, in choosing a birthday gift for a friend, we can look to past birthdays for help in deciding what gift would elicit the greatest joy for the friend this year. In this way, memory is not merely retrospective, but also intrinsically prospective. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Alison Preston, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how the brain supports predictions about the present and future based on memories of the past. Despite decades of neuroscience research focused on retrospective memory, very little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms that enable the prospective use of experience. However, a rich history of research suggests that the brain's medial temporal lobe structures are important for learning and remembering individual experiences. One goal of this project is to learn how these brain structures reactivate existing memories in the face of new experiences. In one set of studies, participants learn sequences of events while undergoing fMRI. The researchers are seeking evidence in the fMRI data for reactivation of prior memories during prediction of upcoming events in the sequence. A second goal of this project is to discover how remembering influences new learning. To be maximally adaptive for future use, memories do not simply consist of individual records of directly experienced events but also include memories built by integrating knowledge across different events. The researchers are learning how remembering past events during new situations provides an opportunity for new memories to be formed that connect present experience with existing memories. For example, if today one sees an unfamiliar man walking a familiar Great Dane, the sight of the dog may trigger a memory for a previous occasion on which one saw that same dog being walked by a woman. By recalling the previous experience with the Great Dane, a new memory can be formed that not only represents the relationship between the man and the dog, and the woman and the dog, but also connects the man and the woman, despite ones never having seen them together. Such integrated memories are a means by which individual experiences are combined to anticipate future judgments and actions. In related fMRI experiments, participants study events that share content and make judgments about the relationship between those experiences. These studies are allowing the researchers to understand how the brain builds a rich, cohesive record of experience by incorporating new events into existing memories.
A core mission of this project is to combine research efforts with teaching, mentorship, and outreach. Unique training and educational activities are being carried out at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels. Students are participating in hands-on training with state-of-the-art fMRI techniques and advanced quantitative methods. This training provides students with the necessary tools to address critical questions in cognitive neuroscience with an increased level of sophistication. To ensure that these training opportunities are available to a broad range of students, the research program forms the basis of a public outreach effort encouraging minority students outside of academic research centers to become involved in neuroscience research. This outreach program includes classroom demonstrations of neuroscience concepts at high schools and community colleges that serve underrepresented minority groups, organized tours for learning about research in the lab, and summer assistantships for students to gain research experience. Public lectures to the general community are engaging the public's interest in basic science and communicating how discoveries in neuroscience can influence many aspects of society, such as educational and clinical practices.
