Furthermore, it appears that frequency-specific patterns of interregional phase synchronization in large-scale networks can provide insight into how multiple contexts underlying a single episode can be recreated in the same network. Candidate coalitions of memory-related representations are also unveiled by methodologies tapping into longer temporal intervals. Methods for assessing functional connectivity in human fMRI data unveil sets of coactivations of regions subserving episodic recollection (e.g., Greenberg Palbociclib ic50 et al., 2005, Maguire et al., 2000 and Burianová et al., 2012). Within the animal domain, immediate early gene (IEG) mapping offers another opportunity

to examine the coactivation and possible coordination of neurons in multiple brain areas during memory retrieval—as reported by Wheeler et al. (2013) for context fear

conditioning. Whereas we used to think see more of plasticity-related gene activation as triggered solely by encoding and necessary for storage, research on reconsolidation (see “trace rebooting” above) has alerted us to the phenomena of gene activation during and after a retrieval session. While the timescale of IEG expression is at least three orders of magnitude slower than that studied in ECoG, obscuring whether gene activation is triggered by, required for, or is some epiphenomenon of memory retrieval, it nonetheless offers

an opportunity to examine the dynamics of trace activation across the brain. Wheeler et al. (2013) establish that the network interactions that are seen in IEG expression change as a representation consolidates over time. T.S. Eliot, whose insights into memory infiltrate our subtitles, saw that life had its retrospective, immediate, and prospective elements. The last of these applies even to memory itself, with a growing number of investigators considering planning from the perspective however of memory (Schacter and Addis, 2007 and Thom et al., 2013). The prospective aspect of memory research is also intriguing. Given our argument that contemporary conceptions of memory processing are diverting from our dual-trace and fixed storage heritage, we can usefully ask, “Where are we going”? Memory is traditionally measured in terms of the change in an individual’s behavior that results from their behavioral experience. This change reflects the encoding and retention over time of experience-dependent internal representations in the brain or of the capacity to reactivate or reconstruct such representations (Dudai, 2002). Representations, unless possibly of very elementary reflexes, are commonly postulated to be encoded in the spatiotemporal activity of neural circuits, ensembles, or Hebbian “cell assemblies” (Buzsáki, 2010).