Episodic memory rescues working memory via pattern separation, pattern completion, and predictive recall
- 1New York University
Abstract
Working memory is capacity-limited, but interactions with episodic memory may offset this constraint. We tested moment-by-moment contributions of episodic representations to working memory by combining the N-back and Mnemonic Similarity tasks. Thirty-one participants, undergoing eye-tracking, first encoded items in a one-back task, classifying them as "same" or "similar" to their predecessor. In a subsequent two-back task, mnemonic discrimination showed a graded, item-specific benefit of prior experience: performance was best for previously compared items, whereas recognition of identical repeats was unaffected. Successful discrimination of previously compared items was accompanied by greater pupil dilation, gradually emerging gaze patterns resembling those elicited by their similar pair-mate, and higher gaze-similarity between one-back and two-back target viewing. Diverging gaze patterns between pair-mates during one-back further predicted two-back discrimination. These findings challenge working memory's characterization as an isolated system, demonstrating how it recruits episodic computations - encoding distinct traces, predicting upcoming content, and reinstating it at retrieval.
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BibTeX
@misc{bai2026episodic,
title = {{Episodic memory rescues working memory via pattern separation, pattern completion, and predictive recall}},
author = {Z. Bai and D. Fougnie and S. Michelmann},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.64898/2026.08.26.746101},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.26.746101v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Episodic memory rescues working memory via pattern separation, pattern completion, and predictive recall
AU - Z. Bai
AU - D. Fougnie
AU - S. Michelmann
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/26
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.08.26.746101
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.26.746101v1
AB - Working memory is capacity-limited, but interactions with episodic memory may offset this constraint. We tested moment-by-moment contributions of episodic representations to working memory by combining the N-back and Mnemonic Similarity tasks. Thirty-one participants, undergoing eye-tracking, first encoded items in a one-back task, classifying them as "same" or "similar" to their predecessor. In a subsequent two-back task, mnemonic discrimination showed a graded, item-specific benefit of prior experience: performance was best for previously compared items, whereas recognition of identical repeats was unaffected. Successful discrimination of previously compared items was accompanied by greater pupil dilation, gradually emerging gaze patterns resembling those elicited by their similar pair-mate, and higher gaze-similarity between one-back and two-back target viewing. Diverging gaze patterns between pair-mates during one-back further predicted two-back discrimination. These findings challenge working memory's characterization as an isolated system, demonstrating how it recruits episodic computations - encoding distinct traces, predicting upcoming content, and reinstating it at retrieval.
ER -