Long-term memory articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early life experience contributes to behaviour in later life. Here the authors show in rats, that the infant brain, during a critical period, forms lasting memories of the spatial context of experiences; in adulthood, these memories involving medial prefrontal cortex improve spatial abilities in similar contexts.

    • María P. Contreras
    • , Marta Mendez
    •  & Marion Inostroza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural dynamics of emotional memory consolidation are not well understood. Here, the authors analyse intracranial recordings from human participants after emotional memory encoding, showing that ripple-locked activity in the amygdala and hippocampus is predictive of subsequent memory.

    • Haoxin Zhang
    • , Ivan Skelin
    •  & Jack J. Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How brain regions communicate to support the learning and recall of rich memories is not fully understood. Using recordings of electrical activity deep within the brains of human patients, the authors discovered a role for the theta rhythm in allowing this bidirectional dialogue across brain regions to happen.

    • Sandra Gattas
    • , Myra Sarai Larson
    •  & Michael A. Yassa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been proposed that the amygdala is required for the familiarity aspect of item recognition. By studying the performance of monkeys with selective amygdala lesions on four converging memory paradigms, the authors demonstrate that the amygdala is not necessary for familiarity memory, but confirm its role in reward processing.

    • Benjamin M. Basile
    • , Vincent D. Costa
    •  & Elisabeth A. Murray

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous work has identified cells in L2/3 of auditory cortex which strongly respond with bursting to a specific learned chord, but not to single component tones in an auditory task. Here the authors show that these cells correlate with the behavioral relevance of the learned composite sounds.

    • Ruijie Li
    • , Junjie Huang
    •  & Hongbo Jia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural basis of individual differences in episodic memory performance is not well understood. Here, the authors show in a large fMRI dataset that activity of the hippocampus, orbitofrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex accounts for individual variability in memory performance.

    • Léonie Geissmann
    • , David Coynel
    •  & Dominique J. F. de Quervain

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People are thought to engage a retrieval brain state when they bring to mind past experiences. Here, using multivariate pattern classification analyses across experimental paradigms, the author shows that internal attention is a central process of the retrieval state.

    • Nicole M. Long

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the brain builds memories from the complex, dynamic experiences that make up everyday life remains poorly understood. Here, the authors show that memories for lifelike events are supported by stable representations of people, contexts, and situations that can be flexibly recombined into unique, specific instances.

    • Zachariah M. Reagh
    •  & Charan Ranganath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Autobiographical memories are associated with activity in the hippocampus and the parietal cortex. Here the authors characterise the neural substrates for retrieving autobiographical memories from a large dataset, and identify a topography within the medial parietal cortex that reflects memory content, age, and memory strength.

    • Wilma A. Bainbridge
    •  & Chris I. Baker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In mice, reactivation of neurons that express cFos during fear conditioning induces a behavioural response. Here the authors show that cFos expression in mouse dentate gyrus shifts every day to different neurons, even during highly consistent spatial navigation, and suggest this clock-like selection mechanism may aid the encoding of episodic memories.

    • Paul J. Lamothe-Molina
    • , Andreas Franzelin
    •  & Thomas G. Oertner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How object salience is encoded in the cortex and basal ganglia remains incompletely understood. Here, the authors show that individual prefrontal cortex neurons are jointly sensitive to the memory of value, aversiveness, novelty, and recency of objects, while the substantia nigra reticulata filters out novelty and recency signals but amplifies value and aversive memories.

    • Ali Ghazizadeh
    •  & Okihide Hikosaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains unclear how past experiences shape how new information is acquired and represented in the brain. Here, the authors provide data suggesting that past experiences influence neocortical integration and the organization of new overlapping memories across time.

    • Sam Audrain
    •  & Mary Pat McAndrews

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Naturalistic experiences often have complex structure, consisting of multiple inter-related events. Here, the authors show that the semantic and causal interconnectedness of events in narratives positively predicts memory performance and neural responses associated with memory encoding and recall.

    • Hongmi Lee
    •  & Janice Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent work has shown that the tuning of hippocampal place cells changes unexpectedly across weeks, a phenomenon known as neural drift. Keinath et al. show that this drift occurs in a particular way, one which preserves the representation of context.

    • Alexandra T. Keinath
    • , Coralie-Anne Mosser
    •  & Mark P. Brandon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Learning enhances sleep across species. The authors identify a neural circuit in Drosophila that mediates the learning-induced sleep and ensures that only long or more intense learning experiences are consolidated to long-term memory.

    • Zhengchang Lei
    • , Kristin Henderson
    •  & Krystyna Keleman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether gut microbes drive cognitive differences in natural populations of animals remains unknown. Here, Li et al. demonstrate a causal link between increased symbiotic Lactobacillus Firm-5 species (L. apis) and improved long-term memory in bumblebees.

    • Li Li
    • , Cwyn Solvi
    •  & Wei Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors used intracranial EEG recordings from patients with epilepsy to show that successful intentional forgetting is due to a selective modification of item-specific top-down connections and not simply a degradation of the memory traces.

    • Sanne Ten Oever
    • , Alexander T. Sack
    •  & Nikolai Axmacher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memories are assumed to undergo a time-dependent systems consolidation, during which hippocampal contributions to memory decrease while neocortical contributions increase. Here, the authors show that noradrenergic arousal after encoding may reverse this course of systems consolidation in humans

    • Valentina Krenz
    • , Tobias Sommer
    •  & Lars Schwabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When two memories are similar, their encoding and retrieval can be disrupted by each other. Here the authors show that memory interference is resolved through abrupt remapping of activity patterns in the human hippocampal CA3 and dentate gyrus.

    • Guo Wanjia
    • , Serra E. Favila
    •  & Brice A. Kuhl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Making a decision requires one to differentiate between choice options, committing to one and leaving the other behind. Here, the authors show that decision-making paradoxically binds options together, such that the outcome of the choice ends up changing the value of both the chosen and the unchosen options, in opposite directions.

    • Natalie Biderman
    •  & Daphna Shohamy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People can search for memories based on their content or context, defined as when and where they were formed. Here, the authors use direct brain recordings to provide evidence in line with the idea that separable neural systems retrieve these two types of information and predict whether recall is organized by time or content.

    • James E. Kragel
    • , Youssef Ezzyat
    •  & Michael J. Kahana

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cellular activity level at the time of learning is thought to be a critical factor to determine which neurons are recruited to encode memory. Here, the authors show that competitive synaptic plasticity mechanisms influence which neurons will encode a fear memory.

    • Yire Jeong
    • , Hye-Yeon Cho
    •  & Jin-Hee Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plastic reweighting of parallel fiber synaptic strength is a mechanism for the acquisition of cerebellum-dependent motor learning. Here, the authors found that optogenetic activation of PCs generates dendritic Ca2+ signals that induce plasticity in vitro and instruct learned changes to coincident eye movements in vivo.

    • Audrey Bonnan
    • , Matthew M. J. Rowan
    •  & Jason M. Christie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Making sense of the world around us often requires flexible access to information from both semantic and episodic memory systems. Here, the authors show that controlled retrieval from functionally distinct long-term memory stores is supported by shared neural processes in the human brain.

    • Deniz Vatansever
    • , Jonathan Smallwood
    •  & Elizabeth Jefferies

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Haque et al. demonstrate that the episodic memory of a single visual scene is sufficient for humans to recognize if a visual scene has subsequently changed. A prediction error signal first arises in the visual association cortex when individuals recognize these changes.

    • Rafi U. Haque
    • , Sara K. Inati
    •  & Kareem A. Zaghloul

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When asked to imagine an event such as a party, individuals will vary in their mental imagery based on their specific experience of parties. Here, the authors show that such signatures of personal experience can be read from brain activity elicited as events are imagined.

    • Andrew James Anderson
    • , Kelsey McDermott
    •  & Feng V. Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When our expectations are violated, it is adaptive to update our internal models to improve predictions in the future. Here, the authors show that during mnemonic violations, hippocampal networks are biased towards an encoding state and away from a retrieval state to potentially update these predictions.

    • Oded Bein
    • , Katherine Duncan
    •  & Lila Davachi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memory recollection involves reactivation of neural activity that occurred during the recalled experience. Here, the authors show that neural reactivation can be decomposed into visual-semantic features, is widely synchronized throughout the brain, and predicts memory vividness and accuracy.

    • Michael B. Bone
    • , Fahad Ahmad
    •  & Bradley R. Buchsbaum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Odours are powerful stimuli used by most organisms to guide behaviour. Here, the authors identify populations of neurons within the anterior olfactory nucleus (AON) which are necessary and sufficient for the behavioural expression of odour memory.

    • Afif J. Aqrabawi
    •  & Jun Chul Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent experimental work has revealed non-linear dendritic integration in interneurons. Here, the authors show, through detailed biophysical modeling, that fast spiking interneurons are better described with a 2-stage artificial neural network model calling into question the use of point neuron models.

    • Alexandra Tzilivaki
    • , George Kastellakis
    •  & Panayiota Poirazi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memory is hypothesised to depend on different brain regions that interact in a network. Here, the authors use case studies of stroke patients with amnesia from the literature to identify brain regions that are part of this network.

    • Michael A. Ferguson
    • , Chun Lim
    •  & Michael D. Fox

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The brain stores memories through a set of neurons known as engram cells. Here, the authors show that engram cells in the mouse hippocampus are organized into sub-ensembles representing distinct pieces of information, which are then orchestrated to constitute an entire memory.

    • Khaled Ghandour
    • , Noriaki Ohkawa
    •  & Kaoru Inokuchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Episodic memory retrieval is hypothesized to rely on hippocampal reinstatement of item-context associations which drives reinstatement of item information in cortex. Here, the authors confirm this sequence of events, using iEEG recordings from the human hippocampus and lateral temporal cortex.

    • D. Pacheco Estefan
    • , M. Sánchez-Fibla
    •  & P. F. M. J. Verschure

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We can recognize an object from one of its features, e.g. hearing a bark leads us to think of a dog. Here, the authors show using fMRI that the brain combines bits of information into object representations, and that presenting a few features of an object activates representations of its other attributes.

    • Sasa L. Kivisaari
    • , Marijn van Vliet
    •  & Riitta Salmelin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While memory is often studied using voluntary recollection, the neural correlates of involuntary memory recall and its effect on cognition are unclear. Here, Ren and colleagues show that the effective connectivity from the anterior hippocampus to the precuneus can predict the strength of involuntary retrieval of episodic memory.

    • Yudan Ren
    • , Vinh T. Nguyen
    •  & Christine C. Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The success of extinction learning is not predictive of long-term retrieval of an extinction memory. Using fMRI to study consolidation of fear extinction in human subjects, the authors show that reactivation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during memory retrieval predicts extinction memory retrieval, and that increasing dopaminergic signaling increases the number of these activations.

    • A. M. V. Gerlicher
    • , O. Tüscher
    •  & R. Kalisch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memory lapses can occur due to ineffective encoding, but it is unclear if targeted brain stimulation can improve memory performance. Here, authors use a closed-loop system to decode and stimulate periods of ineffective encoding, showing that stimulation of lateral temporal cortex can enhance memory.

    • Youssef Ezzyat
    • , Paul A. Wanda
    •  & Michael J. Kahana

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) are used as food additives, it’s unclear whether animals perceive NAS as positive or negative percept. Here, Musso and colleagues show in Drosophila that NAS is a negative percept, encoded in a new type of memory.

    • Pierre-Yves Musso
    • , Aurélie Lampin-Saint-Amaux
    •  & Thomas Preat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Distinct subsets of dopaminergic PAM neurons have been shown to be involved in short-term and long-term memory for sugar reward. Here the authors report the neural circuits and the cellular and molecular mechanisms for short-term and long-term memory for water reward in thirstyDrosophila.

    • Wei-Huan Shyu
    • , Tai-Hsiang Chiu
    •  & Chia-Lin Wu

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