The human brain has the remark­able ability to flexi­bly gener­al­ize knowl­edge from specific learn­ing experi­ences to new situa­tions. However, the mecha­nisms under­ly­ing such gener­al­iza­tion processes are still not fully under­stood. This project aims at charac­ter­iz­ing the cogni­tive and neural repre­sen­ta­tions that under­lie success­ful gener­al­iza­tion processes and to identify factors that influ­ence them (e.g., sleep). As such, we hope to gain a better under­stand­ing of how we make sense of the contin­u­ously chang­ing world around us.

Memory that is adaptive for future use not only requires adequate storage of the specific experi­ences one has encoun­tered but, in addition, depends on integra­tion and gener­al­iza­tion across these experi­ences. It has been suggested that there is a trade-off between the ability to remem­ber specific details of an experi­ence and the ability to form integrated and gener­al­ized memory repre­sen­ta­tions. However, exist­ing research lacks success­ful exper­i­men­tal manip­u­la­tions of the level of gener­al­iza­tion to directly test this relationship.

Theoret­i­cal work on memory forma­tion and consol­i­da­tion have identi­fied two factors that are thought to be especially influ­en­tial in driving gener­al­iza­tion (1) presen­ta­tion of new exemplars in an inter­leaved manner with exemplars that are already stored in memory and (2) repro­cess­ing of learned exemplars during subse­quent sleep.

By testing these two factors, this project aims at obtain­ing an integra­tive under­stand­ing of the cogni­tive and neural mecha­nisms that enable gener­al­iza­tion. As such, both cogni­tive and neural repre­sen­ta­tions, includ­ing neural plastic­ity processes, will be charac­ter­ized. Further­more, the inter­ac­tion between gener­al­iza­tion processes initi­ated during wakeful­ness and subse­quent sleep will be tested to answer the open question whether sleep affects gener­al­iza­tion processes especially if they have not been initi­ated success­fully during learning.