Keeping an eye on memory: how vision shapes episodic memory within naturalistic environments

“情景记忆”是我们对特定的个人过去事件和经历的记忆，比如我们上学的第一天，或者我们的初吻。在回忆这些日常记忆时，我们常常会以生动的细节重建事件发生的地点和背景。事实上，场景的空间布局似乎“支撑”并帮助我们回忆情景记忆的能力。例如，在记忆编码过程中，如果没有视觉感知环境的能力，在后来的检索过程中，这种记忆的生动性似乎会显著降低。此外，最近的神经成像研究表明，当参与者必须感知或区分视觉场景时，被认为负责情景记忆的大脑区域，如海马体，也会参与其中。这项研究表明，理解我们如何在视觉上探索空间世界，对于深入理解我们如何编码和检索情景记忆至关重要。尽管如此，视觉场景处理形成情景记忆的方式在很大程度上仍然未知。例如，目前尚不清楚视觉场景感知如何影响情景记忆的内容和生动程度，以及哪些特征对使场景更容易记忆、更有可能被准确记住很重要。本项目旨在通过探索人类视觉场景处理如何塑造情景记忆的回忆经验以及潜在的神经基质来填补这一知识空白。为了实现这一目标，该项目将结合眼动追踪、虚拟现实（VR）、新颖的场景记忆任务和功能性神经成像来研究自然场景中的眼球运动和视觉注意力如何影响情景记忆的行为和神经标记。研究1将使用一种新颖的场景绘制范式来测量眼睛扫描模式与回忆过程中绘制的物体和特征的精度和准确性之间的关系。研究2将在此基础上进行扩展，利用VR头显呈现的完全沉浸式3D环境，与编码期间探索的原始场景相比，评估记忆回忆的准确性，以及一个人在物理探索期间的视觉注意力与回忆的准确性之间的关系。这个实验将通过使用VR来解释场景中运动的作用，从而代表在现实世界环境和情况下的典型体验。最后，在研究3中，我将结合眼动追踪技术和功能性神经成像来评估场景的视觉采样程度是否与海马在编码和检索时的激活模式有关。总之，这些研究将通过深入了解可能负责记忆和视觉场景处理的大脑区域的激活，提供对视觉系统如何影响情景记忆的理解。该项目将通过探索场景视觉的潜在关键作用，为人类情景记忆提供见解和替代方法。这将对记忆研究领域产生重要影响，并具有广泛的益处，例如对视觉处理和情景记忆过程的潜在支持，这些过程在健康和病理性衰老中都会下降。此外，这一视角将有助于我们理解城市空间的设计，使环境更容易导航，更有视觉吸引力。这对电子游戏行业也有潜在的影响，因为电子游戏行业的目标是为用户创造一种越来越难忘的体验。因此，这项研究可以提供理解和支持这些过程的方法，以使社会中的个人受益。

'Episodic memory' is our memory for specific personal past events and experiences, such as our first day of school, or our first kiss. When recollecting these everyday memories, we often reconstruct the place and context in which the event took place in vivid detail. Indeed, the spatial layout of a scene appears to 'scaffold' and assist our ability to recall an episodic memory. For instance, without the ability to visually perceive the environment during memory encoding, the vividness of such memory appears to be significantly reduced during later retrieval. Further, recent neuroimaging studies suggests that brain regions thought to be responsible for episodic memory, such as the hippocampus, are also engaged when participants must perceive or tell apart visual scenes. This work suggests that understanding how we visually explore the spatial world may be critical for an in-depth understanding of how we encode and retrieve episodic memories. Despite this, the way in which visual scene processing shapes episodic memory remains largely unknown. For example, it remains unclear how visual scene perception influences the content and vividness of episodic memories, and which features are important for making a scene more memorable, and increasingly likely to be accurately remembered. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by exploring the ways in which human visual scene processing shapes the recollective experience of episodic memory, as well as the underlying neural substrates.To achieve this aim, this project will incorporate eye tracking, virtual reality (VR), novel scene memory tasks, and functional neuroimaging to examine how eye movements and visual attention within naturalistic scenes influences both behavioural and neural markers of episodic memory. Study 1 will use a novel scene drawing paradigm to measure the relationship between eye scanning patterns and the precision and accuracy of objects and features drawn during recall. Study 2 will extend upon this by utilising fully immersive 3D environments presented via a VR headset to assess the accuracy of memory recall when compared to the original scene which was explored during encoding, and how one's visual attention during physical exploration relates to the accuracy of recall. This experiment will account for the role of movement within a scene by using VR, thus representing what is typically experienced in real-world environments and situations. Finally, in Study 3, I will combine eye-tracking technology and functional neuroimaging to assess whether the degree of visual sampling of a scene is related to patterns of hippocampal activation at both encoding and retrieval.Together, these studies will provide an understanding of how the visual system influences episodic memory by gaining insight into the activation of brain regions likely to be responsible for memory and visual scene processing. The proposed project will generate insights and alternative approaches to human episodic memory by exploring the potentially key role of scene vision. This will have important implications within the field of memory research, as well as having widespread benefits, such as potential support for visual processing and episodic memory processes that are subject to decline both in healthy, and pathological ageing. Additionally, this perspective will assist our understanding of the design of urban spaces, to make environments more navigable, and visually appealing. As well as having potential implications for video game industries, which aim to create an experience that is increasingly memorable for users. Therefore, this research could provide insight into ways to understand and support such processes to benefit individuals in society.