Humans make sense of the uninterrupted flow of everyday life by segmenting it into events at salient points of environmental change called \"event boundaries\". Although there is substantial evidence for a link between event boundaries and memory, it remains unclear what mechanisms mediate the processing of event boundaries and how they affect memory representations. Recent research suggests that arousal increases at event boundaries and predicts memory organization (Clewett et al. 2020). Meanwhile, the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC-NE) system mediates states of arousal and targets the hippocampus among other areas (Poe et al, 2020), suggesting a possible role in detecting event boundaries and influencing memory. Other work suggests that the P300 scalp EEG waveform indirectly reflects the activity of the LC-NE system (Nieuwenhuis et al. 2005). We explore how event structure affects memory and the possible role of norepinephrine. Human participants encoded images of objects, accompanied by auditory tones that remained stable for several trials before switching (indicating a boundary). We found that event boundaries enhance item-context associative memory performance while impairing the memory of the order of stimuli that span the boundary. We also discuss the next phase of this experiment, exploring how the P300 at event boundaries predicts memory organization.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Memory","Norepinephrine","Events"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33901