Abstract |  "Episodic Memory: It's Only Natural"

Episodic memory, the ability to recollect past events, has been the focus of extensive study in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Almost all of the research on this topic has focused on the ability to recall or recognize specific items from a list, and this work has identified the hippocampus as a critical region for episodic memory. Real-life episodes, however, unfold over a long timescale, and they have a complex structure that is built on knowledge about past events. We have recently proposed a computational framework to understand the roles of different cortico-hippocampal networks in the generation of event models, event segmentation, and episodic memory.  In this talk, I will describe new research aimed at understanding the roles of particular brain networks in representing information about people, places, and situations during the experience of complex events and later, when this information is recalled. I will also describe evidence suggesting how event segmentation and memory for complex events is affected by aging. Collectively, this work highlights the overlap between the neural circuitry that supports episodic memory and the ability to form event models that enable comprehension of film, prose, and spoken conversation.