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Visual attention’s role in memory interference and hippocampal repulsion

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

America Romero¹ (), Soroush Mirjalili¹, Brice Kuhl¹; ¹University of Oregon

When events are highly similar, this can trigger ‘repulsion’ (or differentiation) of hippocampal representations. This phenomenon is thought to play an adaptive role in minimizing memory interference. However, an important and open question is how hippocampal repulsion relates to visual attention. One possibility is that hippocampal representations of similar events only become distinct to the extent that different features of the events are visually sampled. From this perspective, hippocampal repulsion reflects differences in visual input. Alternatively, repulsion may be a direct reaction to the failure to differentially attend to similar events. From this perspective, hippocampal repulsion actually requires similarity in visual input. In the proposed experiment, participants will learn scene-object associations. However, some scenes will be highly similar (pairmates). These pairmates will differ only in one spatial quadrant (e.g., ‘top right’). For some pairmates, participants’ attention during learning will be directed to the “diagnostic” quadrant; for other pairmates, attention will be directed to a “non-diagnostic” quadrant. We hypothesize that when attention is directed to the diagnostic quadrant (relative to the non-diagnostic quadrant), this will facilitate learning but, paradoxically, will also reduce the degree of hippocampal repulsion. Preliminary data from behavioral pilot studies confirm that attention to diagnostic spatial locations improves memory performance and reduces interference. In planned fMRI and eye tracking studies, we will test our primary prediction that diagnostic visual cues reduce hippocampal repulsion and will conduct more fine-grained analyses that track the relationship between visual attention and hippocampal repulsion across stages of learning.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic