Elements of Declarative Memory: The Episodic-Semantic distinction 54 years on

Louis RENOULT, Profesor of Cognitive Neuroscience – University of East Anglia, U.K.  

When: October 12nd 11 am

Where: Salle des Voûtes 

Abstract: One of the most common distinctions in long-term declarative memory is that between semantic (i.e., one's general knowledge of the world) and episodic (i.e., recollection of contextually specific events from one's personal past). However, emerging cognitive neuroscience data suggest a surprisingly large overlap between the neural correlates of semantic and episodic memory. Moreover, personal semantic memories (such as knowledge of personal facts or memory for repeated events) have been studied little and do not easily fit into the standard semantic-episodic dichotomy. In this presentation, I will discuss various approaches that my lab used in recent years to investigate these questions, such as creating new tests and scoring procedures for separating these types of memories and measuring their respective neural correlates in event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. Taken together, these data are inconsistent with a strict separation of semantic and episodic memory. Rather, they are compatible with a component process model, in which semantic, personal semantic, and episodic memory may rely on different weightings of elementary processes, such as sensory-perceptual imagery, spatial and temporal features, and self-reflection.