Involuntary and voluntary memory retrieval relies on distinct neural representations and oscillatory processes.

ABSTRACT: Involuntary memory retrieval is a hallmark symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder and a frequent phenomenon in everyday autobiographical memory. However, the neural mechanisms that drive involuntary retrieval remain unclear. This study aims to elucidate how involuntary retrieval spontaneously initiates memory reactivation and how the reactivated neural representations differ in their content, distinctiveness and temporal compression from voluntary retrieval. Combining a visual half-field paradigm with electroencephalography recordings (EEG) in humans, we tracked reactivation of item-specific neural representations and sensory feature representations measured as representational similarity between different items sharing the same sensory feature - the visual field at encoding. We show tha

SUBMITTER: Kobelt M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12364361 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature