Natural language processing captures memory content associated with shared neural patterns at encoding and retrieval.
Communications Psychology June 4, 2026 June-Kyo Kim, Joshua Koh, Charan Ranganath et al.
People who experience the same event often remember it differently. This study examined whether similarity in what people recall is reflected in shared brain activity patterns. Twenty-four participants watched and later recounted two cartoon movies while undergoing fMRI. Verbal recall was analyzed with topic modeling to measure content similarity across individuals. Greater similarity in recalled content was associated with stronger shared activation patterns in the Default Mode Network (DMN) during both encoding and retrieval, particularly in posterior medial, medial prefrontal, and anterior temporal cortices. The findings suggest that natural language processing tools can link memory content to brain activity and that the DMN supports encoding, interpreting, and recalling complex events.