An embodied perspective: Angular gyrus and precuneus decode selfhood in memories of naturalistic events.

Abstract

While we often assume that memory encoding occurs from an in-body (first-person) perspective, out-of-body experiences demonstrate that we can form memories from a third-person perspective. This phenomenon provides a distinctive opportunity to examine the interaction between embodiment and visual perspective during encoding, and how this interplay shapes the recall of past events. Participants formed memories for naturalistic events following a manipulation of their sense of embodiment from in-body and out-of-body perspectives and recalled them during functional scanning. Region of interest multivariate analyses examined how the angular gyrus, precuneus, and hippocampus reflected visual perspective, embodiment, and their interaction during remembering. Patterns of activity during retrieval in the left angular gyrus and bilateral precuneus predicted embodiment on its own separated from visual perspective. In contrast, we observed only inconclusive evidence that these posterior parietal regions predicted visual perspective independent of embodiment. While the left angular gyrus distinguished between in-body and out-of-body perspectives during the retrieval of events associated with both strong and weak embodiment, decoding accuracy predicting visual perspective was only above chance for events encoded with strong embodiment in the precuneus bilaterally. Our results suggest that the contribution of posterior parietal regions in establishing visual perspectives within memories is tightly interconnected with embodiment. Encoding events from an embodied in-body perspective compared with embodied out-of-body perspective led to higher memory accuracy following repeated retrieval. These results elucidate how fundamental feelings of being located in and experiencing the world from our own body's perspective are integrated within memory.