ARNI Continual Learning Working Group Guest Speaker: Christopher A. Baldassano

Speaker: Christopher A. Baldassano

Title: Remembering events using schematic knowledge

Abstract: Our everyday experiences consist of familiar sequences of events in familiar contexts, and we use our knowledge of the past to understand and remember the present. Research in my lab combines behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging methods to investigate how prior knowledge of temporal and spatial structure impacts perception and memory, by allowing participants to draw on their real-world experiences or build detailed expertise in controlled yet naturalistic domains. I’ll discuss our recent studies showing how the brain’s internal cognitive models can be used to organize event perception in narratives, structure episodic memories, and anticipate upcoming information. These studies argue for a central role of top-down and anticipatory processes in constructing neural event memories.