TY - JOUR
T1 - Event segmentation protects emotional memories from competing experiences encoded close in time
AU - Dunsmoor, Joseph E.
AU - Kroes, Marijn C.W.
AU - Moscatelli, Caroline M.
AU - Evans, Michael D.
AU - Davachi, Lila
AU - Phelps, Elizabeth A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank M. Monfils, J. Lewis-Peacock and the LeDoux lab for helpful comments and discussions. The study was supported by NIH R01 MH097085 (to E.A.P.). J.E.D. is supported by NIH K99R00 MH106719. M.C.W.K is supported by an H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship and a Society in Science—Branco Weiss fellowship. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/4/1
Y1 - 2018/4/1
N2 - Fear memories are characterized by their permanence and a fierce resistance to unlearning by new experiences. We considered whether this durability involves a process of memory segmentation that separates competing experiences. To address this question, we used an emotional-learning task designed to measure recognition memory for category exemplars encoded during competing experiences of fear conditioning and extinction. Here, we show that people recognized more fear-conditioned exemplars encoded during conditioning than conceptually related exemplars encoded immediately after a perceptual event boundary that separates conditioning from extinction. Selective episodic memory depended on a period of consolidation, an explicit break between competing experiences, and was unrelated to within-session arousal or the explicit realization of a transition from conditioning to extinction. Collectively, these findings suggest that event boundaries guide selective consolidation to prioritize emotional information in memory - at the expense of related but conflicting information experienced shortly thereafter. We put forward a model whereby event boundaries bifurcate related memory traces for incompatible experiences. This is in contrast to a mechanism that integrates related experiences for adaptive generalization 1-3, and reveals a potentially distinct organization by which competing memories are adaptively segmented to select and protect nascent fear memories from immediate sources of interference.
AB - Fear memories are characterized by their permanence and a fierce resistance to unlearning by new experiences. We considered whether this durability involves a process of memory segmentation that separates competing experiences. To address this question, we used an emotional-learning task designed to measure recognition memory for category exemplars encoded during competing experiences of fear conditioning and extinction. Here, we show that people recognized more fear-conditioned exemplars encoded during conditioning than conceptually related exemplars encoded immediately after a perceptual event boundary that separates conditioning from extinction. Selective episodic memory depended on a period of consolidation, an explicit break between competing experiences, and was unrelated to within-session arousal or the explicit realization of a transition from conditioning to extinction. Collectively, these findings suggest that event boundaries guide selective consolidation to prioritize emotional information in memory - at the expense of related but conflicting information experienced shortly thereafter. We put forward a model whereby event boundaries bifurcate related memory traces for incompatible experiences. This is in contrast to a mechanism that integrates related experiences for adaptive generalization 1-3, and reveals a potentially distinct organization by which competing memories are adaptively segmented to select and protect nascent fear memories from immediate sources of interference.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41562-018-0317-4
DO - 10.1038/s41562-018-0317-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042866274
VL - 2
SP - 291
EP - 299
JO - Nature Human Behaviour
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
SN - 2397-3374
IS - 4
ER -