The Press Stories
You vividly remember the time you slipped on snow 8 years ago, but on your first day at work, you forgot about it. Why do we retain some information as memories and not others? Scientists have discovered a new criterion that affects this process and calls it “predictive value”. Journal of Neuroscience. Information that makes it possible to better anticipate future events is stored preferentially.
Our memory is limited
“Because (long-term) memory has limited capacity and resources, memory systems must prioritize the information to be encoded.”, researchers from Yale University (USA) explain. Since 2017, science has identified a number of factors that can play a role in the precious mental space that stores our memories. These known criteria include attention, emotion, motivation, stress, and sleep. “Here we test a new factor that regulates the formation of long-term memory: predictive value”. Researchers report.
This is because long-term memory is used not only to remember the past but also to make predictions that help us behave appropriately and effectively in the face of a new experience.
You vividly remember the time you slipped on snow 8 years ago, but on your first day at work, you forgot about it. Why do we retain some information as memories and not others? Scientists have discovered a new criterion that affects this process and calls it “predictive value”. Journal of Neuroscience. Information that makes it possible to better anticipate future events is stored preferentially.
Our memory is limited
“Because (long-term) memory has limited capacity and resources, memory systems must prioritize the information to be encoded.”, researchers from Yale University (USA) explain. Since 2017, science has identified a number of factors that can play a role in the precious mental space that stores our memories. These known criteria include attention, emotion, motivation, stress, and sleep. “Here we test a new factor that regulates the formation of long-term memory: predictive value”. Researchers report.
This is because long-term memory is used not only to remember the past but also to make predictions that help us behave appropriately and effectively in the face of a new experience. This unfortunate memory of falling on snow will allow you to spot pavement depressions before they leave your ankle in the future. So this predictive function is based on statistical learning, which allows us to understand and prepare for the world around us. Logically, for long-term memory, information has predictive value only if it can make better predictions than already stored memories.
One image can predict another, which is displayed in the brain
That’s what researchers are testing in ten epileptic volunteers who already have electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor and treat their disease. It is these electrodes that allow researchers to monitor brain activity in their visual cortex. As seemingly random images emerge, the ten subjects gradually discover that certain pairs come together—for example, the beach always heralds a mountain. Using intracranial electroencephalography driven by implanted electrodes, researchers can record and isolate brain signatures from each type of image. When a beach appears, they notice that the signature associated with the image of the mountain arrives before the latter is shown to them! Thus the view of the beach allowed participants to predict the mountain.
The volunteers had to be tested if they remembered the pictures, which would indicate their encoding in memory. When faced with 96 pictures, along with 24 new pictures that had never been seen before, participants had to indicate which ones they were familiar with and which they thought they had discovered during the test. “Whether a participant remembers or forgets a given item depends on whether that item triggered a prediction during its encoding”, recall the editors of the publication. Therefore, an element (mountain followed by a beach) that produced and verified a solid prediction need not be stored because the prediction was correctly realized without it. On the other hand, an unpredictable item must be encoded and become memory, precisely to help make a better prediction in the future.
We first memorize what improves imperfect prediction
That’s what they notice! “We found that the forgotten elements of the first category (eg beach, author’s note) induced reliable predictions during encoding (eg Visiting the Hill, Author’s Note) Nothing for those who memorized”, the researchers detailed. The results suggest interference between the generation of predictions and their encoding into memory, they add. “Such interference provides a mechanism for regulating predictive memory formation.“, so “Prioritize encoding information to help learn new predictive relationships“.
If you encounter an ice block again and manage to avoid it, you may not remember the event. This would be good news, because no doubt a vivid memory of your fall would have protected you!
