Some previous studies have shown that increased stress hormone levels have beneficial effects on memory encoding; however, there is no clear consensus on which encoding-related processes are affected by stress hormones. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between interindividual differences in neuroendocrine response to acute…

During associative retrieval, the brain reinstates neural representations that were present during encoding. The human medial temporal lobe (MTL), with its subregions hippocampus (HC), perirhinal cortex (PRC), and parahippocampal cortex (PHC), plays a central role in neural reinstatement. Previous studies have given compelling evidence for…

Attention, the mechanism that prioritizes stimuli in the environment for further processing, plays an important role in behavioral choice. In the present study, we investigated the automatic orienting of attention to cues that signal reward. Such attentional capture occurs despite negative consequences, and we investigated whether this…

Visual imagery and mental reconstruction of scenes are considered core components of episodic memory retrieval. Individuals with absent visual imagery (aphantasia) score lower on tests of autobiographical memory, suggesting that aphantasia may be associated with differences in episodic and associative processing. In this online study, we tested…

Binding visual features into coherent object representations is essential both in short- and long-term memory. However, the relationship between feature binding processes at different memory delays remains unexplored. Here, we addressed this question by using the Mnemonic Similarity Task and a delayed-estimation working memory task on a large…

In an ever-changing environment, survival depends on learning which stimuli represent threat, and also on updating such associations when circumstances shift. It has been claimed that humans can acquire physiological responses to threat-associated stimuli even when they are unaware of them, but the role of awareness in updating threat…

Four experiments examined the effects of a dangerous context and a systemic epinephrine injection on sensory preconditioning in rats. In each experiment, rats were exposed to presentations of a tone and light in stage 1, light-shock pairings in stage 2, and test presentations of the tone alone and light alone in stage 3. Presentations of the tone…

There has been considerable focus on investigating age-related memory changes in cognitively healthy older adults, in the absence of neurodegenerative disorders. Previous studies have reported age-related domain-specific changes in older adults, showing increased difficulty encoding and processing object information but minimal to no impairment in…

Balancing exploration and anti-predation are fundamental to the fitness and survival of all animal species from early life stages. How these basic survival instincts drive learning remains poorly understood. Here, using a light/dark preference paradigm with well-controlled luminance history and constant visual surrounding in larval zebrafish, we…

It is commonly assumed that memories contribute to value-based decisions. Nevertheless, most theories of value-based decision-making do not account for memory influences on choice. Recently, new interest has emerged in the interactions between these two fundamental processes, mainly using reinforcement-based paradigms. Here, we aimed to study the…

Reducing sensory experiences during the period that immediately follows learning improves long-term memory retention in healthy humans, and even preserves memory in patients with amnesia. To date, it is entirely unclear why this is the case, and identifying the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning this effect requires suitable animal models,…

When our experience violates our predictions, it is adaptive to update our knowledge to promote a more accurate representation of the world and facilitate future predictions. Theoretical models propose that these mnemonic prediction errors should be encoded into a distinct memory trace to prevent interference with previous, conflicting memories.…

When we look at repeated scenes, we tend to visit similar regions each time--a phenomenon known as "resampling." Resampling has long been attributed to episodic memory, but the relationship between resampling and episodic memory has recently been found to be less consistent than assumed. A possibility that has yet to be fully considered…

According to dual-process theory, recognition memory performance draws upon two processes, familiarity and recollection. The relative contribution to recognition memory are commonly distinguished in humans by analyzing receiver-operating-characteristics (ROC) curves; analogous methods are more complex and very rare in animals but fast familiarity…

The features of an image can be represented at multiple levels--from its low-level visual properties to high-level meaning. What drives some images to be memorable while others are forgettable? We address this question across two behavioral experiments. In the first, different layers of a convolutional neural network (CNN), which represent…