Reinstating memories' temporal context at encoding causes Sisyphus-like memory rejuvenation.

ABSTRACT: As memories age, their immediate retrievability decreases albeit, due to ongoing memory consolidation, their future rate of forgetting weakens. Here, we show in two experiments (N = 1.216 participants) that mentally traveling back in time to older memories' temporal context at encoding reverses the two effects and makes the memories similar again to how they were at an earlier point in time. Mental time travel increased both the memories' immediate retrievability and their future rate of forgetting when individuals attempted to reinstate context deliberately and actively and when they retrieved other memories sharing a similar temporal context. Intriguingly, the forgetting after mental time travel even followed the same trajectory as the forgetting after encoding. Attempts to reinst

SUBMITTER: Bauml KT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12358906 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature