Person memory is supported by the neural reinstatement of social interactions

Poster No:

810 

Submission Type:

Abstract Submission 

Authors:

Eshin Jolly1, Sushmita Sadhukha1, Maryam Iqbal1, Luke Chang1

Institutions:

1Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

First Author:

Eshin Jolly, PhD  
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH

Co-Author(s):

Sushmita Sadhukha  
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
Maryam Iqbal  
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
Luke Chang, PhD  
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH

Introduction:

How does remembering other people comport with our understanding of episodic memory? One possibility based on prior work in social cognition is that we remember people as a function of their intrinsic attributes (e.g. personality traits) (Uleman & Kressel, 2013). Another possibility based on event-segmentation theory is that people are simply contained with the broader events that we use to segment our experiences (Zacks, 2020). More recent work has demonstrated that relationships between people drive how we represent and remember others (Jolly et al., 2023). We compared these possibilities using naturalistic neuroimaging to estimate a measure of neural reinstatement by having participants watch a rich character drama and later recall what they could about each character in an unconstrained manner.

Methods:

Participants (N=36) watched the first four episodes of the television show Friday Night Lights, and later performed a naturalistic character recall task in which they recounted aloud what they could remember about each main character for two minutes while undergoing fMRI. Average memory patterns were estimated for each recalled character separately for each participant in 268 parcellated regions of interest (Shen et al., 2013) using a general linear model (GLM). Three estimates of neural reinstatement were computed by comparing the spatial similarity of each memory pattern to brain activity during episode watching for: (a) general narrative events involving a character; (b) specific moments in time when a character could be seen or heard; (c) even more specific moments when a character having a social interaction. Reinstatement effects were compared within each participant using a multi-level model to identify what regions showed preferential reinstatement of social interactions when remembering each character (Fig 1). To link reinstatement activity to memory content, we further identified any regions in which the magnitude of neural reinstatement for specific social interactions predicted the probability of participant's remembering that specific relationship when recalling a character (Fig 2). All analyses were performed using permutation testing and corrected for multiple comparisons across ROIs using FDR q < 0.05.
Supporting Image: Fig1.png
 

Results:

Overall, several notable regions within both the social brain (dmPFC, pSTS, ATL) and episodic memory (PMC, hippocampus) networks showed preferential reinstatement for social interactions relative to general character information or events that involved a character. Within these identified regions, a single node within the right pSTS predicted the probability of participants recalling specific relationships as a function of reinstatement magnitude for observing those particular relationships.
Supporting Image: Fig2.png
 

Conclusions:

This study provides neural evidence that social memory for individuals consists of the information we learn about how they interact with others. This provides a mechanism for why we represent and remember people through their relationships with others (Jolly et al., 2023) rather than intrinsic attributes like traits (Uleman & Kressel, 2013) or more general narrative events (Zacks, 2020). These findings also provide convergent evidence for recent work demonstrating that social interaction features can predict time-series activity in the pSTS when recalling general narrative information (Masson et al., 2022). This raises the possibility the pSTS in particular may play a role in memory beyond social perception (Pitcher & Ungerleider, 2021) by specifically reinstating social interaction information that we acquire.

Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:

Social Cognition 1
Social Neuroscience Other

Learning and Memory:

Learning and Memory Other 2

Keywords:

Memory
Multivariate
Other - Social Cognition

1|2Indicates the priority used for review

Provide references using author date format

Jolly, E., Sadhukha, S., Iqbal, M., Molani, Z., Walsh, T. M., Manning, J. R., & Chang, L. J. (2023). People are represented and remembered through their relationships with others. Psyarxiv.
Masson, H. L., Chen, J., & Isik, L. (2022). A shared neural code for social interaction encoding and memory in the human superior temporal sulcus. In bioRxiv (p. 2022.10.03.510639). https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.03.510639
Pitcher, D., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2021). Evidence for a Third Visual Pathway Specialized for Social Perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(2), 100–110.
Shen, X., Tokoglu, F., Papademetris, X., & Constable, R. T. (2013). Groupwise whole-brain parcellation from resting-state fMRI data for network node identification. NeuroImage, 82, 403–415.
Uleman, J. S., & Kressel, L. M. (2013). A brief history of theory and research on impression formation. Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition, 53–73.
Zacks, J. M. (2020). Event Perception and Memory. Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 165–191.