PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of Münster
Memories not only contain information about the past. Instead, they also help us predict the future and generate expectations about what will happen next in a situation. When a memory is recalled to make predictions, it can be altered, for example if the prediction was wrong (prediction error; PE). We are interested in the extent to which and how PEs can alter memories, and the properties of episodic PEs that trigger such changes.
Building on a previous project in which the type of PEs was (qualitatively) manipulated, we will manipulate episodic PEs quantitatively. In addition, we will use social interactions as naturalistic, personally meaningful stimuli. We will use a multi-stage paradigm in which subjects' brain activity is measured both during encoding and during retrieval of episodes in MRI.