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How we transmit memories to other brains: constructing shared neural representations via communication

A. Zadbood, J. Chen, Y.C. Leong, K.A. Norman, U. Hasson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/081208
A. Zadbood
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
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  • For correspondence: azadbood@princeton.edu
J. Chen
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
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Y.C. Leong
3Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
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K.A. Norman
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
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U. Hasson
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
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Abstract

It is striking that humans are able to encode and later verbally share their memories of an episode with listeners, who are in turn able to imagine (mentally construct) details of the episode which they have not personally experienced. However, it is unknown how strongly the neural patterns elicited by imagining specific episodes resemble the neural states elicited during the original encoding of those episodes. In the current study, using fMRI and a natural communication task, we traced how neural patterns associated with specific scenes depicted in a movie are encoded, verbally recalled, and then transferred to a group of naïve listeners who construct the scenes of the movie in their imagination. By comparing neural patterns across the three conditions, we report, for the first time, that event-specific neural patterns are observed in the default mode network (DMN) and shared across the encoding, reinstatement (spoken recall), and new construction (imagination) of the same real-life episode. This study uncovers the intimate correspondences between memory encoding and imagination, and highlights the essential role that our common language plays in the process of transmitting one’s experiences to other brains.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 16, 2016.
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How we transmit memories to other brains: constructing shared neural representations via communication
A. Zadbood, J. Chen, Y.C. Leong, K.A. Norman, U. Hasson
bioRxiv 081208; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/081208
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How we transmit memories to other brains: constructing shared neural representations via communication
A. Zadbood, J. Chen, Y.C. Leong, K.A. Norman, U. Hasson
bioRxiv 081208; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/081208

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