Reframing episodic memory within its proper bounds: The role of non-perceptual factors in remembering

情节记忆传统上被认为是对个人过去事件的记忆，用自己的感官体验。然而，幻觉和梦境，与他人的替代经历，甚至与文学的叙事经历，都可能导致记忆表现出通常被认为是情节记忆的特征，如鲜活、顺序性和第一人称视角。我们的项目旨在通过论证将情节记忆的边界重新定位为一种自然类型来解释这种紧张。它通过一种自然主义的方法来比较基于感知的记忆和某些非基于感知的记忆的神经生物学特征。具体地说，这些特征是：(F1)为记忆奠定基础的类似经验的大脑状态；(F2)构建所记忆事件的情景并反映原始经验的沉浸式、感觉运动和情感特征的机制；以及(F3)作为类似经验的大脑状态和记忆事件之间适当的因果联系的最小记忆痕迹，并保证记忆的可靠性和特异性。这些特征的比较提出了一些挑战，将通过五个工作包来解决。在WP1中，我们评估了将自然的情景记忆扩展到包括不基于个人感知经验的情况的理由。我们将自然类理解为最大类，由于某种统一的潜在因果机制，其成员可能共享他们的属性。WP2解决了真实性挑战，之所以提出这个挑战，是因为基于非真实经验的记忆并不植根于实际事件。对此，我们提出了事件性的预设解释，并从指称寄生的角度解释了情景记忆中的指称关系。WP3将阐明知觉记忆和非知觉记忆是如何通过类似的机制进入最小记忆痕迹的，尽管它们在现象学上存在差异。在WP4中，我们将提出一个答案，通过将自我与第一人称视角分开，在非基于感知的记忆中，记忆视角的概念需要如何重新评估。最后，在WP5中，我们将开发一个具身账户，以沉浸式、感觉运动和情感情景构建的方式塑造记忆，由最少的痕迹提供信息，并辅之以语义信息，这与流行的形象主义观点相反，后者认为记忆主要具有感觉内容。这些调查的结果将为关于记忆和想象力之间关系的辩论提供依据。如果事实证明，自然的情节记忆需要扩展，那么我们的发现将对以情节记忆为目标的科学研究和临床干预背景产生潜在影响。

Episodic memory is traditionally conceived of as the remembering of events from one’s personal past, experienced with one’s own senses. However, hallucinations and dreams, vicarious experiences with other people, or even narrative experiences with literature, may all lead to memories that exhibit qualities typically considered to be indicative of episodic memory, such as vividness, sequentiality and a first-person perspective. Our project aims to account for this tension by arguing for a reframing of the boundaries of episodic memory as a natural kind. It does so through a naturalistic approach that compares the neurobiological features of both perception-based and certain non-perception-based memories. Specifically, these features are: (F1) the experience-like brain state that grounds the memory; (F2) the mechanism that constructs a scenario of the remembered event and reflects the immersive, sensorimotor and emotional character of the original experience; and, (F3) the minimal memory trace that acts as an appropriate causal link between the experience-like brain state and the remembering event and warrants the reliability and specificity of the memory.The comparison of these features raises a number of challenges that will be addressed through five work packages. In WP1, we assess the grounds to extend the natural kind of episodic memories to include cases that are not based on personal, perceptual experience. We understand a natural kind as the maximal class whose members are likely to share their properties because of some uniform underlying causal mechanism. WP2 addresses the factivity challenge, which is raised because memories based on non-veridical experiences are not grounded in actual events. In response, we develop a presuppositional account of factivity and explain reference relations in episodic memories in terms of referential parasitism. WP3 will elucidate how both perception- and non-perception-based memories, despite their phenomenological differences, feed into minimal memory traces by similar mechanisms. In WP4, we will develop an answer to how, in non-perception-based memories, the notion of memory perspective needs to be re-evaluated, by dissociating self from first-person perspective. Finally, in WP5, we will develop an embodied account that casts remembering in terms of an immersive, sensorimotor, and emotional scenario construction informed by a minimal trace and supplemented with semantic information, in contrast to prevailing imagistic views that conceive of memory as principally having sensory content. The results of these investigations will inform debates on the relation between memory and imagination. If it turns out that the natural kind of episodic memories needs extending, then our findings will have a potential impact on scientific study and clinical intervention contexts that target episodic memory.