Narratives as Networks: Predicting Memory from the Structure of Naturalistic Events

Abstract

Human life consists of a multitude of diverse and interconnected events. However, extant research has focused on how humans segment and remember discrete events from continuous input, with far less attention given to how the structure of connections between events impacts memory. We conducted an fMRI study in which subjects watched and recalled a series of realistic audiovisual narratives. By transforming narratives into networks of events, we found that more central events—those with stronger semantic or causal connections to other events—were better remembered. During encoding, central events evoked larger hippocampal event boundary responses associated with memory consolidation. During recall, high centrality predicted stronger activation in cortical areas involved in episodic recollection, and more similar neural representations across individuals. Together, these results suggest that when humans encode and retrieve complex real-world experiences, the reliability and accessibility of memory representations is shaped by their location within a network of events.