Paper accepted in PNAS

Zhang, Y., Chen, J., Woodman, G.F., Lin, R., Chen, F., Weng, X., Jensen, O., Theeuwes, J., and Wang, B., (in press). Automaticity speeds the retrieval of instances from the human hippocampus. PNAS

This paper was created in collaboration with the Benchi Wang Group.

Our study explored automatic processing, which involves performing a task with little conscious effort. A good example of this is not remembering how you drove through a set of intersections just a few minutes prior. Using intracranial recordings from 22 individuals, we found that as learning progressed, hippocampal theta oscillations allowed us to decode upcoming responses from the participant more rapidly. This could not be performed using prefrontal or temporal oscillations. Brief bursts of high-frequency activity (hippocampal ripples) have also been found to support memory retrieval after established automaticity.

Overall, our findings demonstrate that learning not only reduces neural effort but also accelerates memory retrieval from the hippocampus. The oscillatory activity within the hippocampus plays a critical role in speeding access to learned information.