Framing memories as points that can move anywhere in this neural state space helps explain everyday puzzles. Some vivid childhood scenes still depend on hippocampal wiring; other recent events are rich but managed by cortical networks. Memories can also drift toward vagueness or sharpen with practice, and those shifts may reflect travel through different parts of the space rather than a simple handoff from one brain region to another. This view aligns with experiments showing parallel or additive roles for multiple systems during retrieval and with reports that memory quality changes in nonlinear ways over time.
For people interested in learning, aging, or designing therapies, the state-space idea opens new questions. Which paths through the space support durable learning? How does sleep or rehearsal nudge memories toward useful configurations? Mapping these routes could help us guide memory change in ways that boost resilience and inclusion for diverse learners and patients. Read the full article to explore how this spatial model connects neural dynamics to human potential and what it implies for strengthening or reshaping memories.
Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories that predict a unidirectional process where memories are first supported by the hippocampus and then the neocortex. Here, I propose a 3D state space for episodic memories. The first two dimensions relate to whether episodic retrieval is driven by the hippocampus and the neocortex, critically allowing for independent and additive contributions from both regions. The third dimension relates to the episodic specificity of retrieval. Memories can be located at any point in this state space and move to any other location. The state space captures the dynamic nature of episodic memory and broadens the search space of possible memory states and transformations across time.