Deepu Murty
Department of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh
As we navigate through the world, we are inundated with immense amounts of information—to much information to veridically encode into long-term memory. Rather than attempt to encode all of this information, memory is adaptive. Information that is most relevant to achieving future goals is prioritized in long-term memory. In my talk, I will present a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies that characterize (1) how the neural systems underlying motivation facilitate episodic memory and choice behavior and (2) how aberrant connectivity within this circuit results in maladaptive behavior in psychosis. Together, these studies support a model in which individuals tailor their memories of the environment to their goal states during encoding, which provides a foundation of information to support both future adaptive and maladaptive behavior.