If you want to see some screenshots and videos (including audio!) of the VR Memory Palace, check out this awesome article from Columbia! Importantly,
each room featured music from all over the world, including tracks by neuroscientists you may know: @jmasis.bsky.social and @jayneuro.bsky.social!
What if we could tell you how well you’ll remember your next visit to your local coffee shop? ☕️
In our new Nature Human Behaviour paper, we show that the 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 can be measured with neuroimaging – and 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸.
super cool work from @jay_neuro on how music shapes our memories of the movies we watch: folks watched a jim carrey movie & the musical themes reactivated memories from the movie! ||| sounds like i should hire a composer to score my life so i can improve my memory 🎹🎵🎶
This means that before your next coffee shop visit, I could take a snapshot of your brain’s existing coffeeshop representation, audit it, and then estimate how well you’ll remember your next experience in it!
So, why would your knowledge of a space help you to form new memories?
For memories to stick, it’s not just about the episode itself, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 *𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲* 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲.
We found that spatial contexts (the ‘where’ 🏡) with reliable neural representations predict better reinstatement of the objects (the ‘episode’ ☕️ ) experienced there.
