The Body in Memory

Memories of personal past events affect not only how we recall the past, but how we interpret the present and behave in the future. These memories are by nature highly embodied.

During retrieval, the sensory, motor, and affective components of the original event are vividly re-experienced with one´s sense of self bound in the centre. But how do our bodies influence the way we turn fleeting experiences into lasting memories?

An exciting new line of research directed at understanding the influence of the body on memory for events indicates that experiencing ownership over a body from a first-person perspective enhances subjective (i.e. memory vividness) and objective (i.e. accuracy) aspects of retrieval (Iriye & Ehrsson, 2022).

Transferring one´s sense of bodily ownership and self-location to a postiion outside of one´s physical body at encoding disrupts functioning of the hippocampus at retrieval, a critical hub of episodic memory (Bergouignan et al., 2014).

Yet, we do not know how the manipulation of bodily selfhood  affects neural activity during encoding, and how it later relates to activity at retrieval.

Further, if disrupted bodily selfhood impairs memory accuracy and hippocampal functioning, will it also render memories more suscepible to distortion?´Body in Memory ´ will combine cutting-edge virtual reality with functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate the critical role our bodies play in preserving our ability to vividly relive the past.