Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Volitional learning promotes theta phase coding in the human hippocampus.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Episodic memory encoding fluctuates at a theta rhythm of 3-10 Hz.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Selective Modulation of Evidence Accumulation by Hippocampal Theta Oscillations During Mnemonic Decision-Making.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Coordinated hippocampal-entorhinal representations support human context-dependent spatial navigation.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Involuntary and voluntary memory retrieval relies on distinct neural representations and oscillatory processes.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Sustained Hippocampal Theta Oscillations Reflect Experience-Dependent Learning in Backward Temporal Order Memory Retrieval.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reinstatement and transformation of memory traces for recognition.Science advances · 2025Article
- Theta oscillations optimize a speed-precision trade-off in phase coding neurons.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Dynamic patterns of functional connectivity in the human brain underlie individual memory formation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Maintenance and transformation of representational formats during working memory prioritization.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Harmonic memory signals in the human cerebral cortex induced by semantic relatedness of words.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Parallel cognitive maps for multiple knowledge structures in the hippocampal formation.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Temporal Dynamics of Competition between Statistical Learning and Episodic Memory in Intracranial Recordings of Human Visual Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Mnemonic construction and representation of temporal structure in the hippocampal formation.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Rhythms of human attention and memory: An embedded process perspective.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Review
- Looking for the neural basis of memory.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2022Review
- The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Electrophysiological studies in rodents show that active navigation enhances hippocampal theta oscillations (4-12 Hz), providing a temporal framework for stimulus-related neural codes. Here we show that active learning promotes a similar phase coding regime in humans, although in a lower frequency range (3-8 Hz). We analyzed intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) from epilepsy patients who studied images under either volitional or passive learning conditions. Active learning increased memory performance and hippocampal theta oscillations and promoted a more accurate reactivation of stimulus-specific information during memory retrieval. Representational signals were clustered to opposite phases of the theta cycle during encoding and retrieval. Critically, during active but not passive learning, the temporal structure of intracycle reactivations in theta reflected the semantic similarity of stimuli, segregating conceptually similar items into more distant theta phases. Taken together, these results demonstrate a multilayered mechanism by which active learning improves memory via a phylogenetically old phase coding scheme.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.