Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker

• Main Author: Veronika V. Nourkova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-02-01
• Series: Behavioral Sciences
• Subjects: compressed life review; panoramic memories; total recall; life-review experience; autobiographical memory; self-defining memories; eye-tracking; parallel awareness; working memory; long-term wm
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/10/3/60

The compressed life review (CLR) is a mnemonic illusion of having “your entire life flashing before your eyes”. This research was guided by concerns over the retrospective methodology used in CLR studies. To depart from this methodology, I considered the long-term working memory (WM), “concentric”, and “activation-based” models of memory. A novel theoretically rooted laboratory-based experimental technique aimed to elicit the CLR-like experience with no risk to healthy participants was developed. It consists of listening to superimposed audio recordings of previously trained verbal cues to an individually composed set of self-defining memories (SDMs). The technique evoked a self-reported CLR-like experience in 10 out of 20 participants. A significant similarity in eye movement patterns between a single SDM condition and a choir of SDM conditions in self-reported CLR experiencers was confirmed. In both conditions, stimuli caused relative visual immobilization, in contrast to listening to a single neutral phrase, and a choir of neutral phrases that led to active visual exploration. The data suggest that CLR-like phenomenology may be successfully induced by triggering short-term access to the verbally cued SDMs and may be associated with specific patterns of visual activity that are not reportedly involved with deliberate autobiographical retrieval.