Title: Affective Episodic Simulation

Presenter: Roland Benoit, PhD, Associate Professor, ICS and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract: This presentation examines our ability to vividly imagine prospective events. Such episodic simulation seem to be grounded in our memory systems. These provide details from the past as well as the constructive operations to recombine these details into the simulation of novel events. Episodic simulation conveys adaptive benefits as it allows for the affective experience of the possible future. In the first part, I will explore how this anticipatory affect influences our decisions and shapes our models of our environment. In particular, I will present evidence that we learn from merely simulated events much like we learn from actual events. In the second part, I want to further explore the functions supported by a core region supporting episodic simulation and episodic memory: the medial prefrontal cortex. Using Natural Language Processing and examinations of people with focal brain lesions, I will provide evidence that this region represents schematic knowledge of our world.This presentation examines our ability to vividly imagine prospective events. Such episodic simulation seem to be grounded in our memory systems. These provide details from the past as well as the constructive operations to recombine these details into the simulation of novel events. Episodic simulation conveys adaptive benefits as it allows for the affective experience of the possible future. In the first part, I will explore how this anticipatory affect influences our decisions and shapes our models of our environment. In particular, I will present evidence that we learn from merely simulated events much like we learn from actual events. In the second part, I want to further explore the functions supported by a core region supporting episodic simulation and episodic memory: the medial prefrontal cortex. Using Natural Language Processing and examinations of people with focal brain lesions, I will provide evidence that this region represents schematic knowledge of our world.

Bio: Dr. Roland Benoit is a tenured Associate Professor studying the cognitive neuroscience of adaptive memory at the University of Colorado Boulder. Before moving into that position, he headed an independent research group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Roland Benoit received his PhD from University College London under the supervision of Paul W. Burgess and conducted research as a postdoc and research associate with Daniel L. Schacter at Harvard University and Michael C. Anderson at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK. His research considers human memory not primarily as a retrospective activity that allows us to revisit the past. Instead, he seeks to understand it as an adaptive capacity that prepares us for the future and that influences our decisions and behavior.