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Humans possess the remarkable capacity to vividly remember a plethora of experiences from their lives. They can voluntarily reminisce about cherished moments but also be haunted by intrusive memories of unpleasant experiences. At the heart of the research in Dr. Benoit’s Adaptive Memory Lab is the insight that memory is not merely a passive capacity but a constructive process. As such, memories, on one hand, are malleable to change and disruption but, on the other hand, can also be recombined into novel experiences. We seek to understand the nature of adaptive memory by using behavioral, fMRI, computational, and neuromodulation methods, and by examining cognitive functions in patients with focal brain lesions. In particular, we focus on two intertwined research areas:

1. How can we intentionally forget unwanted memories of the past?
2. How can we use our knowledge of the past for the simulation of the possible future?

Selected publications:

Meyer, A. K., & Benoit, R. G. (2022). Suppression weakens unwanted memories via a sustained reduction of neural reactivation. Elife, 11, e71309.

Benoit, R. G., Paulus, P. C., & Schacter, D. L. (2019). Forming attitudes via neural activity supporting affective episodic simulations. Nature Communications, 10(1), 2215.

Benoit, R. G., Davies, D. J., & Anderson, M. C. (2016). Reducing future fears by suppressing the brain mechanisms underlying episodic simulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(52), E8492-E8501.

Benoit, R. G., & Anderson, M. C. (2012). Opposing mechanisms support the voluntary forgetting of unwanted memories. Neuron, 76(2), 450-460.

Benoit, R. G., Szpunar, K. K., & Schacter, D. L. (2014). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex supports affective future simulation by integrating distributed knowledge. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(46), 16550-16555.