Primary Sensory Cortex In Human Memory Reconsolidation

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Learning from past experience is fundamental for many animals including humans. This ability allows us to flexibly adapt to ever-changing environments. Learning requires storing completely novel information, as well as integrating new information into existing memory. The latter function demands memory flexibility. Re-consolidation has been proposed as the biological mechanism by which such flexibility is achieved.Recent research has provided us with great detail on the molecular and cellular pathways underlying memory re-consolidation in specific brain areas. However, memory often relies on an interplay of different brain regions. This is particularly the case in humans. The contribution of these different brain regions to re-consolidation remains incompletely understood. This impairs our theoretical understanding of this process in humans, and a clinical application. Memory interventions - whether experimental or therapeutic - cannot be targeted to specific brain regions without precise knowledge on their contribution.The proposed project will deliver on these shortcomings by using non-invasive brain stimulation. Our previous work has shown that interfering with one part of the brain that contributes to registering touch (somatosensory cortex) impairs remembering - but not learning - that touch predicts an aversive event. In the proposed experiments, our participants will learn that certain touch-like stimulation predicts an aversive event. We will later remind people of this association and then interfere with somatosensory cortex to create a temporary processing deficit in this region. This will allow us to investigate whether this region is crucially required for the spontaneous re-consolidation process that ensues after the memory has been recalled. If this is the case, then this will crucially inform theories of systems-level memory flexibility. It also has a potential to be further developed into a clinical application.Because we will be using a large sample (N = 350), carefully designed control groups, and state-of-the-art technology, a negative result will be equally informative and is likely to allow conclusions about systems-level differences between consolidation and re-consolidation processes, thus complementing previous research on the molecular similarities and differences between these processes.