Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How are experiences of events used to update knowledge of predictive relations in semantic memory? We examined the roles of anterior-lateral entorhinal cortex (alEC), important for encoding recently experienced temporal relations, and middle temporal gyrus (MTG), involved in familiar event concepts. Participants underwent fMRI during exposure to novel event sequences and a memory probe phase (Session 1) and the same process a week later (Session 2). Across distinct sequences, predictive relations among similar events could either be Consistent, or the roles of the events could swap (Inconsistent). We examined the effect of Consistency on the strength of relational memory content. Areas that integrate across diverse experiences should be aided in the Consistent condition. We found that alEC performed this integrative role in Session 1, and at Session 2, similar effects were also observed in MTG. We suggest that these areas both contribute to building relational knowledge from experience.