Statistical Computations Underlying the Dynamics of Memory Updating

Abstract

Psychophysical and neurophysiological studies have suggested that memory is not simply a carbon copy of our experience: Memories are modified or new memories are formed depending on the dynamic structure of our experience, and specifically, on how gradually or abruptly the world changes. We present a statistical theory of memory formation in a dynamic environment, based on a nonparametric generalization of the switching Kalman filter. We show that this theory can qualitatively account for several psychophysical and neural phenomena, and present results of a new visual memory experiment aimed at testing the theory directly. Our experimental findings suggest that humans can use temporal discontinuities in the structure of the environment to determine when to form new memory traces. The statistical perspective we offer provides a coherent account of the conditions under which new experience is integrated into an old memory versus forming a new memory, and shows that memory formation depends on inferences about the underlying structure of our experience.

Author Summary

When do we modify old memories, and when do we create new ones? We suggest that this question can be answered statistically: The parsing of experience into distinct memory traces corresponds to inferences about the underlying structure of the environment. When sensory data change gradually over time, the brain infers that the environment has slowly been evolving, and the current representation of the environment (an existing memory trace) is updated. In contrast, abrupt changes indicate transitions between different structures, leading to the formation of new memories. While these ideas fall naturally out of statistical models of learning, they have not yet been directly tested in the domain of human memory. In this paper, we describe a model of statistical inference that instantiates these ideas, and test the model by asking human participants to reconstruct previously seen visual objects that have since changed gradually or abruptly. The results of this experiment support our theory of how the statistical structure of sensory experiences shapes memory formation.