Neurosalience #S6E6 with Chris Baldassano - Event scripts: How the brain structures experience

“Naturalistic stimuli open up new exploration…”

Dr. Christopher Baldassano is an associate professor at Columbia University and leads the Dynamic Perception and Memory Lab. With a background in electrical engineering from Princeton and a PhD in computer science from Stanford, Chris has pioneered innovative approaches to understanding memory and cognition. Following a postdoc at Princeton with Uri Hasson and Ken Norman, he joined Columbia in 2018. His research focuses on how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves events using naturalistic stimuli, hidden Markov models, and multivariate analysis techniques.

In this episode, Peter and Chris explore the fascinating world of event structures and memory. They discuss Chris’s pioneering work on event scripts, neural frameworks that act as cognitive scaffolds for autobiographical memories. The conversation covers how the brain segments continuous experience into discrete events, the role of event boundaries in memory encoding, and the critical function of the hippocampus in organizing these temporal structures. Chris explains his use of naturalistic stimuli and hidden Markov models to reveal the subtle dynamics of how we combine recurring information to respond more efficiently to future experiences. Along the way, Chris shares valuable insights on the evolution of neuroscience research and offers thoughtful advice for aspiring scientists navigating the field.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

07:37 - Transitioning from Computer Science to Neuroscience

13:01 - Exploring Naturalistic Stimuli in Neuroscience

18:11 - Hidden Markov Models in Narrative Perception

22:46 - Event Boundaries and Memory Encoding

27:49 - The Role of the Hippocampus in Memory

33:01 - Implications for Mental Health and Memory Disorders

38:19 - Enhancing Memory Techniques

41:11 - Contextualization in Memory

46:19 - Understanding Brain States

49:01 - AI and Contextual Knowledge

53:29 - Infant Cognition and Event Structures

01:01:31 - Future Directions in Research

Works mentioned:

2:28 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPLWOBmaLkY

(Baldassano talk at NIH workshop on naturalistic stimuli)

14:42 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28772125/

(Baldassano et al., 2017 - Neuron - "Discovering Event Structure in Continuous Narrative Perception and Memory")

15:02 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30249790/

(Baldassano et al., 2018 - Journal of Neuroscience - "Representation of Real-world Event Schemas During Narrative Perception")

18:24 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29087305/

(Vidaurre, Smith & Woolrich, 2017 - PNAS - "Brain network dynamics are hierarchically organized in time" - using Markov models in a different way)

19:41 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17338600/

(Zacks et al., 2007 - Psychological Bulletin - "Event perception: A mind-brain perspective" - foundational work on event boundary processes)

27:04 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27121839/

(Huth et al., 2016 - Nature - "Natural speech reveals the semantic maps that tile human cerebral cortex" - semantic information stored throughout the brain)

37:15 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22982082/

(LePort et al., 2012 - Neurobiology of Learning and Memory - Jim McGaugh's study on highly superior autobiographical memory)

53:01 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36252007/

(Yates et al., 2022 - PNAS - "Neural event segmentation of continuous experience in human infants")

Episode producers:

Xuqian Michelle Li