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Event networks and the neural representations that support real-world memory

Award Number: R01MH133732
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2023
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 03/31/2028

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Event networks and the neural representations that support real-world memory - Project Summary Memory systems evolved to inform the continual learning and decision making of organisms as they explore and engage with an enormously complicated world. Humans in particular have a remarkable ability to recount complex sequences of events: we can easily reconstruct a narrative about the past hour or day purely from memory. In such real-world remembering, semantic and causal associations become exceedingly important, defining a web of relational connections across time to guide recall. For example, your day might contain two hub events: a dinner party that requires visiting several shops to pick up supplies, and a morning phone call saying that your child has a fever and needs to go home; each spawns a multitude of events that make up your day. Rich associations among these moments form an “event network” whose local and global properties shape recall; your decisions guide how each event will unfold. While studies show that relations between simple items are important for memory organization and its accompanying neural computations, no existing models consider the higher-order structure of networks composed from inter-related naturalistic events. Even among naturalistic studies, most use passively-viewed movies or stories; participants have no choices to make or goals to pursue. This lack of attention to the higher-order network properties and volitional aspects of real- world experiences has hindered efforts to identify the cortical dynamics that underlie ecologically meaningful memory processes. We seek to understand how memory encoding and retrieval of realistic events is implemented, in terms of cortical representations and interactions between brain systems. Doing so requires paradigms with two critical attributes. First, the stimuli must be sufficiently complex. Memory researchers have long focused on reductive scenarios with isolated stimuli that intentionally destroy semantic and causal connections. In contrast, our experiments use realistic events that are richly associated with each other and will naturally generate a diversity of event network structures. Second, participants must take an active role in creating their memories. Organisms in the real world can volitionally interact with their input stream: at a crowded party, you can choose to explore the kitchen or the living room, talk to the biologist or the musician, leave early or stay until dawn. We will test how participants' volitional behaviors, as they interact with and actively seek information about their environment, shape event networks and neural representations of events. Altogether, these experiments will provide novel frameworks and tools to examine how emergent higher-order structure in natural experiences governs the neural mechanisms underlying encoding and recall. By advancing the level of ecological validity and stimulus complexity in human memory research, we expect to help uncover brain-behavior relationships not apparent in simpler paradigms, and increase the translatability of laboratory findings to real-world applications.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $362,874 )
2026	2026	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	3/24/2026	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$362,874
														Subtotal = $362,874

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $539,875 )
2025	2025	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	3/31/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$458,893
2025	2025	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	3	9/22/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$80,982
														Subtotal = $539,875

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $550,835 )
2024	2024	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	2	8/12/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$55,083
2024	2024	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	2	3/20/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$495,752
														Subtotal = $550,835

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $543,564 )
2023	2023	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	6/29/2023	NEW	$543,564
														Subtotal = $543,564

Grand Total All Awards = $1,997,148

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Event networks and the neural representations that support real-world memory

Award Number: R01MH133732

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2023

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 03/31/2028

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