Strong mnemonic prediction errors increase cognitive control, attention, and arousal.

ABSTRACT: Ongoing experience is continuously processed in the context of past events. Divergence between current experience and memory-based predictions (i.e., a mnemonic prediction error; MPE) is theorized to be a signal for the hippocampus that encoding, as opposed to retrieval, should be prioritized. We asked how MPEs place demands on cognitive and neural resources beyond the hippocampus, and whether these demands differ as a function of prediction strength. We investigated these questions across two experiments, wherein we recorded scalp electroencephalography and/or pupillometry as 101 young human adults performed an associative memory task. Strong MPEs, more so than weak MPEs, increased physiological indices of cognitive control (frontal theta), attention (posterior alpha and pupil size), and

SUBMITTER: Xue AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12622033 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature