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Coordinating mind and world: a frontoparietal mechanism orchestrates the alignment of perception and memory
Poster Session E, Friday, October 2, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Meichao Zhang1, Chang Liu1, Katya Krieger-Redwood2, Jonathan Smallwood3, Elizabeth Jefferies2; 1Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2Department of Psychology, University of York, 3Department of Psychology, Queen’s University
Adaptive cognition requires the continuous coordination of internally generated memory and ongoing perceptual input. Declarative memory supports this process through two complementary systems. Semantic memory, anchored in anterior and lateral temporal cortices, provides conceptual knowledge that enables the interpretation of verbal and nonverbal information (Binney et al., 2010; Jefferies, 2013; Lambon Ralph et al., 2017; Naspi et al., 2021; Patterson et al., 2007; Pobric et al., 2010a; Zhang, Bernhardt, et al., 2022). Episodic memory, relying on the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe, supports the construction of specific past events and imagined scenes, often disengaging cognition from the immediate sensory environment (Irish et al., 2017; Liang et al., 2013; Silson et al., 2019; Tanguay et al., 2023; Tarder-Stoll et al., 2025; Xie et al., 2024; Zhang, Bernhardt, et al., 2022). Although semantic and episodic memory are often associated with distinct subsystems of the default mode network (DMN), these distinctions are typically examined under conditions that confound memory content with perceptual context. Here, across four fMRI experiments, we tested whether declarative memory organisation is instead governed by interaction-based control processes that align mnemonic representations with current perceptual demands. Experiments 1 and 2 orthogonally manipulated memory content (semantic vs episodic retrieval) and perceptual coupling (coupled vs decoupled cognition). Experiment 1 employed a tightly controlled semantic and episodic retrieval paradigm, while Experiment 2 used more naturalistic reading and autobiographical generation tasks. Across both datasets, we identified a shared interaction architecture involving frontoparietal cortex and efferent-oriented DMN regions. This architecture responded selectively to the interaction between memory content and perceptual context, rather than either factor alone, and additionally overlapped with regions implicated in semantic control. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses demonstrated that this interaction architecture showed stronger coupling with visual cortex during perceptually decoupled cognition. Importantly, similar connectivity patterns were observed across both frontoparietal and efferent-DMN components of the interaction architecture, suggesting a distributed coordination mechanism rather than a function restricted to a single subsystem. These findings suggest that controlled retrieval depends on flexible gating of perceptual and mnemonic features according to current cognitive demands. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated the functional significance of this architecture. In resting-state data, stronger intrinsic coupling between the interaction architecture and visual cortex predicted better reading comprehension and reduced mind-wandering propensity. In a conflict paradigm manipulating concurrent reading and autobiographical retrieval, the same architecture showed enhanced visual coupling when perceptual representations needed to be stabilised against internally generated interference. Together, these findings suggest that declarative memory is organised not simply according to memory content, but through a frontoparietal–DMN interaction architecture that dynamically coordinates perceptual and mnemonic representations across internally and externally oriented cognition.
Topic Areas: Control, Selection, and Executive Processes,