​​​​​Talk from  Aidan Horner, University of York, York Episodic Memory Lab​

Short abstract:​​

Episodic events are thought to be represented in a coherent manner, allowing for the holistic retrieval of all event elements. The forgetting of events is also thought to be holistic – when we forget an event, we forget it in its entirety. I will present behavioural, computational modelling, and fMRI research that provides evidence that events are both retrieved and forgotten holistically, in both younger and older adults and in developmental populations. I will also present data suggesting this holistic retrieval is specific to events, and may not always apply to the forgetting of other representations – such as the forgetting of object representations. I will then discuss how complex events are retrieved over time and whether changes occur as a function of systems consolidation. I will use this body of research to provide a theoretical framework that makes predictions about the underlying neural mechanisms that support retrieval and forgetting across a hierarchy of representations: from low-level object representations, to event representations, to higher-order episodic narratives..​

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