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Linguistic Scaffolds Shape the Reconstruction of Visual Memories

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Xinhao Wang^1,2 (), Simon Davis^1,3, Roberto Cabeza¹; ¹Duke University, ²Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, ³Indiana University

Language shapes not only how we perceive the world but also how we reconstruct our experiences in memory. To understand how linguistic scaffolds contribute to episodic memory recall, we examined the neural representations of two basic visual features, color and location, that differ in their verbalizability. In our fMRI experiment, participants encoded everyday objects presented in arbitrary colors and spatial locations while attending to either color or location. During retrieval, they recalled the cued feature, rated its vividness, and reported its value along a continuous scale. Both features were sampled from continuous parameter spaces, enabling detailed mapping of feature-specific neural representations. We constructed linguistic-categorical models for color from behavioral naming data, where similarity between hues was determined by shared color labelling across participants, and for location using eight common spatial terms. Veridical visual models for both features were determined by the angular distance between two hues or spatial locations on the 360° feature wheel. Representational similarity analysis (RSA) revealed that during color encoding, veridical visual representations dominated in the lateral occipital and posterior fusiform cortices, with no regions showing significant linguistic-categorical representation. During color retrieval, however, significant linguistic-categorical representations emerged in the lingual gyrus, posterior fusiform and lateral occipital cortex, showing a “flip” in color representation format. In contrast, location representations remained consistently visual across encoding and retrieval, strongest in early visual and posterior cortices. These findings suggest that when visual information can be richly verbalized, memory retrieval engages linguistic scaffolds, supporting the reconstruction of experience through language-based representations.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic