A unifying account of replay as context-driven memory reactivation.

ABSTRACT: During rest and sleep, sequential neural activation patterns corresponding to awake experience re-emerge, and this replay has been shown to benefit subsequent behavior and memory. Whereas some studies show that replay directly recapitulates recent experience, others demonstrate that replay systematically deviates from the temporal structure, the statistics, and even the content of recent experience. Given these disparate characteristics, what is the nature and purpose of replay? Here, we offer a theoretical framework in which replay reflects simple context-guided processes that facilitate memory. We suggest that during awake learning, the brain associates experiences with the contexts in which they are encoded, at encoding rates that vary according to the salience of each experience. Durin

SUBMITTER: Zhou Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12803516 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature