Summary: Learning new information about the world—like details from a fantasy realm—engages brain regions distinct from those used to recall personal experiences. In a new study, participants learned fictional facts about imaginary civilizations and were later tested on what they remembered.
Brain scans revealed specific areas that encoded semantic information about people and places, with stronger activity predicting better recall. The results show that factual learning recruits its own neural network separate from autobiographical memory systems.
Key Facts:
- Distinct Learning Systems: The brain uses specialized regions for learning impersonal, semantic information—different from those for personal memories.
- Predictive Brain Activity: Stronger activation in regions encoding people and places predicted which facts participants remembered later.
- Fiction as a Tool: Imaginary civilizations provided a unique way to study how the brain forms and retains new factual knowledge.
Source: SfN
While studies have linked brain areas to remembering personal experiences, brain areas involved in learning more impersonal information about the world remain unclear.
In a new Journal of Neuroscience paper, Scott Fairhall and colleagues, from the University of Trento, used fMRI on 29 human volunteers as they performed a learning task to shed light on how the brain acquires semantic, impersonal information.
In the task, participants learned 120 fictitious facts about three imaginary civilizations based off fantasy works, like Game of Thrones. Nearly 2 d later, researchers assessed which facts people recalled better than others during a memory test.
Brain imaging pointed to activity from distinct regions that were sensitive to semantic information about places and people during learning.
The quality of activity in two of these regions, representing the strength of the information about places and people, could even predict whether people recalled the information during the memory task.
Says Fairhill, “These findings suggest that the mechanism for learning new facts about the world is partially distinct from the previously well-characterized brain mechanisms for remembering things that happen in our lives, which depends on different structures.”
Key Questions Answered:
A: How the brain learns factual, impersonal information about the world rather than personal experiences.
A: Participants learned fictional facts about imaginary civilizations while undergoing brain imaging, then completed a memory test two days later.
A: Activity in certain brain regions tied to people and places predicted memory strength, revealing distinct mechanisms for factual learning.
About this learning and memory research news
Author: SfN Media
Source: SfN
Contact: SfN Media – SfN
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Semantic Representational Strength in the Precuneus and Lateral ATL Predicts Successful Factual Learning” by Scott Fairhall et al. Journal of Neuroscience
Abstract
Semantic Representational Strength in the Precuneus and Lateral ATL Predicts Successful Factual Learning
Learning novel facts is central to modern life. While cortical regions involved in this process have been identified, the neural substrates underlying successful knowledge acquisition have remained elusive.
In this fMRI study, we presented human participants (N=29; 7, male) with a naturalistic learning task where 120 fictitious encyclopaedic facts relating to people or places drawn from three imaginary civilisations.
We then compared items that were subsequently recalled to those that were forgotten on a memory test that targeting associative learning, administered on average a day and a half later.
To complement univariate analysis, multivariate pattern analysis was used to identify regions sensitive to semantic content during encoding, identifying medial precuneus, left angular gyrus (AG), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC), and the lateral anterior temporal lobes (latATL) bilaterally.
Within these regions, the strength of informational content within the precuneus and left latATL predicted subsequent retrieval. In contrast, planned analyses did not find univariate differences between remembered and forgotten facts.
Targeted follow-up ROI analysis indicated a possible role of response magnitude in left inferior frontal gyrus and no univariate or multivariate effects within medial temporal lobe structures.
Collectively, these results support a model of fact learning predominantly driven by the richness of representations within semantic systems that is partially distinct from episodic learning mechanisms.
