When freely recalling past events, individuals tend to successively remember stimuli that were studied close together in time—a phenomenon known as temporal clustering. Temporal clustering is thought ...

March 7 – 10, 2026 CNS Account CNS 2026 | Workshops, Socials & Special Events   SESSION DATE TIME LOCATION Satellite – International Sleep Replay Workshop Friday, March 6 8:00 am – 6:00 pm Salon F Wor...

Stories as an evolved cognitive technology

Katja Crone (TU Dortmund)

In cognitively normal older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia, physical inactivity was associated with faster tau protein buildup and cognitive decline.

Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories that predict a unidirectional process where memories are first supported by the hippocampus and then the neocortex. Here, I propose a 3D state space for episodic memories. The first two dimensions relate to whether episodic retrieval is driven by the hippocampus and the neocortex, critically allowing for independent and additive contributions from both regions. The third dimension relates to the episodic specificity of retrieval. Memories can be located at any point in this state space and move to any other location. The state space captures the dynamic nature of episodic memory and broadens the search space of possible memory states and transformations across time.

A new study hints that age-related changes in our brains may explain why time feels like it's slipping away faster with every passing year.

Depression in young patients is linked to difficulty in taking action to avoid something unpleasant, while the ability to withdraw and not act remains intact.