Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Addiction Behavior and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
Juliane Nagel
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Addiction Behavior and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
Martin F Gerchen
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Department of Psychology, Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Heidelberg/Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Çağatay Gürsoy
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Addiction Behavior and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Heidelberg/Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Peter Kirsch
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Department of Psychology, Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Heidelberg/Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, United Kingdom; Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Steffen Gais
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Addiction Behavior and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; Department of Psychology, Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Declarative memory retrieval is thought to involve reinstatement of neuronal activity patterns elicited and encoded during a prior learning episode. Furthermore, it is suggested that two mechanisms operate during reinstatement, dependent on task demands: individual memory items can be reactivated simultaneously as a clustered occurrence or, alternatively, replayed sequentially as temporally separate instances. In the current study, participants learned associations between images that were embedded in a directed graph network and retained this information over a brief 8 min consolidation period. During a subsequent cued recall session, participants retrieved the learned information while undergoing magnetoencephalographic recording. Using a trained stimulus decoder, we found evidence for clustered reactivation of learned material. Reactivation strength of individual items during clustered reactivation decreased as a function of increasing graph distance, an ordering present solely for successful retrieval but not for retrieval failure. In line with previous research, we found evidence that sequential replay was dependent on retrieval performance and was most evident in low performers. The results provide evidence for distinct performance-dependent retrieval mechanisms, with graded clustered reactivation emerging as a plausible mechanism to search within abstract cognitive maps.
