[CorTalk]
Consider what you know of Albert Einstein. Your knowledge likely forms a narrative, linking pieces of information related to the events of his life and work. Now consider what you did yesterday. This knowledge also translates into a narrative linking the events of the day. These examples demonstrate that narratives organize events into knowledge. In this talk, I will propose that our brains form narratives through a process termed “replay”. Originally observed in rodents during spatial navigation tasks, replay involves the rapid reactivation of cell firing patterns related to previous locations. It is postulated that replay binds these locations into an internal model of the environment, which can be used for navigation. I will propose that reactivations, measured in human fMRI data, can similarly bind the neural representations of previous events into an internal model of a narrative. This model can subsequently be used to regenerate the narrative from memory.
Date: 13 June 2025, 16:00
Venue: Sherrington Building, off Parks Road OX1 3PT
Venue Details: Blakemore Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Avital Hahamy (UCL)
Organising department: MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit
Organiser: Sasha Tinelli (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: sasha.tinelli@chch.ox.ac.uk
Host: Sasha Tinelli (University of Oxford)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Sasha Tinelli