What happened when? Brain and behavioral responses to violated expectations about the structure and content of episodic memories

Abstract

Episodic memories are not static but can be modified on the basis of new experiences, potentially allowing us to make valid predictions in the face of an ever-changing environment. Recent research has identified prediction errors during retrieval as a possible trigger for such changes. In the present study, we used modified episodic cues to investigate whether different types of mnemonic prediction errors modulate brain activity and subsequent memory performance. Participants encoded different episodes which consisted of short toy stories. During a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session, participants were then presented videos showing the original episodes, or modified versions thereof. In modified videos, either the order of two subsequent action steps was changed or an object was exchanged for another. Content modifications recruited inferior frontal, parietal, and temporo-occipital areas reflecting the processing of the new object information, while brain responses to structure modifications in right dorsal premotor and inferior frontal areas remained subthreshold. In a post-fMRI memory test, the participants tendency to accept modified episodes as originally encoded increased significantly when they had been presented modified versions already during the fMRI session. Our study provides valuable initial insights into the neural processing of different types of episodic prediction errors and their influence on subsequent memory.