Personal semantics: at the crossroads of semantic and episodic memory

Declarative memory is usually described as consisting of two systems: semantic and episodic memory. Between these two poles, however, may lie a third entity: personal semantics (PS). PS concerns knowledge of one's past. Although typically assumed to be an aspect of semantic memory, it is essent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in cognitive sciences 2012-11, Vol.16 (11), p.550-558
Main Authors: Renoult, Louis, Davidson, Patrick S.R, Palombo, Daniela J, Moscovitch, Morris, Levine, Brian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Brain - physiology
Cognitive ability
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Learning. Memory
Memory
Memory - classification
Memory - physiology
Models, Psychological
Neuroimaging
Neurology
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reviews
Semantics
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Summary:Declarative memory is usually described as consisting of two systems: semantic and episodic memory. Between these two poles, however, may lie a third entity: personal semantics (PS). PS concerns knowledge of one's past. Although typically assumed to be an aspect of semantic memory, it is essentially absent from existing models of knowledge. Furthermore, like episodic memory (EM), PS is idiosyncratically personal (i.e., not culturally-shared). We show that, depending on how it is operationalized, the neural correlates of PS can look more similar to semantic memory, more similar to EM, or dissimilar to both. We consider three different perspectives to better integrate PS into existing models of declarative memory and suggest experimental strategies for disentangling PS from semantic and episodic memory.
ISSN:1364-6613
1879-307X
DOI:10.1016/j.tics.2012.09.003