A content-based representational scaffold for naturalistic event memories

Abstract

Although every life event is unique, there are considerable commonalities across events. However, little is known about whether or how the brain flexibly represents information about different event components at encoding and during remembering. Here, we show that different cortico-hippocampal networks systematically represent specific components of events depicted in videos, both during viewing and during episodic memory retrieval. Regions of an Anterior Temporal Network represented information about people, generalizing across contexts, whereas regions of a Posterior Medial Network represented context information, generalizing across people. Medial prefrontal cortex generalized across videos depicting the same schema, whereas the hippocampus maintained event-specific representations. Similar effects were seen in real-time and recall, suggesting reuse of event components across overlapping episodic memories. These findings reveal a computationally optimal strategy in cortico-hippocampal networks for encoding different high-level event components, supporting efficient reuse for event comprehension, imagination, and recollection.