Abstract:

Memory is not a perfect record of the past. Instead, certain events are remembered while others are forgotten, and the events we do remember can differ in strength and clarity. Our strongest memories are often those that are subjectively salient, engaging top-down influences related to our personal emotional or motivational states. Uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying these top-down influences on memory could inform future therapeutic approaches to strengthening memory, as well as aid in understanding maladaptively biased memory in psychiatric disorders. To that end, this talk will summarize my attempts to identify neuronal correlates of subjectively salient memories in the human brain using direct brain recordings.