Building integrated and structured memory representations during goal-directed learning
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Acquiring knowledge from the events in our lives that can be drawn upon in the future is central to the human experience. Interactions between the medial temporal lobe and neocortex allow us to both recall specific episodes from the past and abstract relationships across experiences when memories share common elements. Over learning, dynamic memory processes integrate new experiences with existing memory representations, building structured knowledge about the world. As the emergence of structured knowledge is crucial for planning and decision-making, delineation of the neural and psychological processes underlying integration and abstraction are necessary to advance understanding of how memory guides behavior. In this dissertation, I illustrate how technical advances in the behavioral and neural sciences are transforming the study of memory. I describe a novel, multi-day experimental paradigm that combines virtual navigation, functional neuroimaging, and neural pattern similarity analyses to investigate how humans build structured knowledge through immersive, goal-directed navigation. I begin by presenting behavioral evidence for structured knowledge formation as participants learn to navigate in local and global virtual environments and discuss how study participants differ in the building of such knowledge. In subsequent chapters, I characterize experience-driven changes in memory representations in the medial temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes across learning in local and global navigation tasks. I find that learning restructures human memory representations to reflect experienced transitions within the virtual environment. I also find evidence that the hippocampus begins to build a representational structure extending beyond directly experienced transitions, and that the nature and characteristics of hippocampal representations relate to participants' subsequent navigation performance. Together, this work sheds light on how the brain comes to represent the external world and builds memories that support flexible, goal-directed behavior.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Fernandez, Corey Angelea |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Giocomo, Lisa |
| Degree supervisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Thesis advisor | Giocomo, Lisa |
| Thesis advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Thesis advisor | Gardner, Justin, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | McClelland, James L |
| Thesis advisor | Williams, Leanne M |
| Degree committee member | Gardner, Justin, 1971- |
| Degree committee member | McClelland, James L |
| Degree committee member | Williams, Leanne M |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Neurosciences Program |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Corey Angelea Fernandez. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Neurosciences Program. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/vm038ng5696 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Corey Angelea Fernandez
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...