Reading specific memories from human neurons before and after sleep

Yuanyi Ding; Soraya L. S. Dunn; John J. Sakon; Chenda Duan; Yipeng Zhang; Joel I. Berger; Ariane E. Rhone; Kirill V. Nourski; Hiroto Kawasaki; Matthew A. Howard; Vwani P. Roychowdhury; Itzhak Fried

doi:10.1101/2025.07.01.662486

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Reading specific memories from human neurons before and after sleep

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Reading specific memories from human neurons before and after sleep

Yuanyi Ding, Soraya L. S. Dunn, John J. Sakon, Chenda Duan, Yipeng Zhang, Joel I. Berger, Ariane E. Rhone, Kirill V. Nourski, Hiroto Kawasaki, Matthew A. Howard, …

bioRxiv

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1.1

07/04/2025

DOI: 10.1101/2025.07.01.662486

PMCID: PMC12236671

PMID: 40631106

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https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.01.662486View

Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

The ability to retrieve a single episode encountered just once is a hallmark of human intelligence and episodic memory [1]. Yet, decoding a specific memory from neuronal activity in the human brain remains a formidable challenge. Here, we develop a transformer neural network model [2, 3] trained on neuronal spikes from intracranial microelectrodes recorded during a single viewing of an audiovisual episode. Combining spikes throughout the brain via cross-channel attention [4], capable of discovering neural patterns spread across brain regions and timescales, individual participant models predict memory retrieval of specific concepts such as persons or places. Brain regions differentially contribute to memory decoding before and after sleep. Models trained using only medial temporal lobe (MTL) spikes significantly decode concepts before but not after sleep, while models trained using only frontal cortex (FC) spikes decode concepts after but not before sleep. These findings suggest a system-wide distribution of information across neural populations that transforms over wake/sleep cycles [5]. Such decoding of internally generated memories suggests a path towards brain-computer interfaces to treat episodic memory disorders through enhancement or muting of specific memories.

Neuroscience

Details

Title: Subtitle: Reading specific memories from human neurons before and after sleep
Creators: Yuanyi Ding
Soraya L. S. Dunn
John J. Sakon
Chenda Duan
Yipeng Zhang
Joel I. Berger
Ariane E. Rhone
Kirill V. Nourski
Hiroto Kawasaki
Matthew A. Howard
Vwani P. Roychowdhury
Itzhak Fried
Resource Type: Preprint
Publication Details: bioRxiv
Edition: 1.1
DOI: 10.1101/2025.07.01.662486
PMID: 40631106
PMCID: PMC12236671
NLM abbreviation: bioRxiv
ISSN: 2692-8205
eISSN: 2692-8205
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Language: English
Date posted: 07/04/2025
Academic Unit: Neurology; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Neurosurgery; Otolaryngology
Record Identifier: 9984845456402771

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