Visualizing the Biphasic Nature of Memory Transformation in the Wild: From Detailed to Abstract Recollections and Back

Abstract

Trace Transformation Theory posits that episodic memories progressively transform into gist-based representations during consolidation. Prior research has primarily investigated memory transformation during consolidation through laboratory-based experiments at sparse intervals, emphasizing the relationship between these transformations and neural changes at the systems level, while largely neglecting the role of synaptic-level neural changes. We aim to bridge the existing gap by systematically characterizing the daily progression of memory trace transformation. We achieve this by quantifying the degree of linguistic detail and abstraction in a comprehensive field dataset of episodic memories and plotting these metrics against the time elapsed since encoding. We observe a biphasic pattern alternating between high-detail and low-detail representations, which challenges the idea of gradual memory specificity decay and aligns with temporal dynamics observed in synaptic plasticity, specifically late-phase LTP and LTD decay constants.