Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Memory is often discussed in terms of encoding strength, retention, and retrieval success. Yet these dimensions do not fully explain how remembered information acquires structure within a larger mnemonic system. Strongly retained or highly accessible traces need not be broadly integrated, and their persistence or vividness alone does not establish that they will support abstraction, flexible transfer, or cross-context inference (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Schlichting and Preston, 2015). What remains insufficiently specified, therefore, is not only why some information persists, but how persistent information becomes organized within the long-term architecture of memory.Existing accounts have clarified important components of this problem. Work on attentional allocation, salience, precision weighting, and neuromodulatory gain has described how incoming signals may receive different processing and learning priority (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005;Friston, 2010;Feldman and Friston, 2010;Hasselmo, 2006). In parallel, relational memory theories have emphasized that memory depends not only on persistence, but on the binding of events, contexts, and higher-order regularities into structures that support flexible cognition (Eichenbaum, 2004;Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Eichenbaum and Cohen, 2014). These accounts address important aspects of selection, plasticity, and relational binding, but do not by themselves specify how differences in persistence and structural incorporation accumulate into different forms of longterm mnemonic organization.The present article treats selection and mnemonic architecture as recursively coupled. The properties of incoming activity, the current state of the system, and its pre-existing organization jointly constrain which patterns become eligible for plastic modification. Selective stabilization concerns the degree to which eligible activity acquires persistence and recurrent availability, whereas relational integration concerns whether and how stabilized activity becomes incorporated into broader preexisting representational structure. Through repeated learning episodes, stabilization and integration modify this structure and thereby alter the conditions of future selection.Selective stabilization and relational integration are not proposed as alternative labels for episodic and semantic memory. Established memory categories describe forms or systems of memory, whereas the present constructs describe cross-cutting architectural dimensions that may operate within and across those categories (Renoult et al., 2019). The framework is concerned with whether selected information persists and how it contributes to broader mnemonic organization, rather than with replacing conventional classifications of memory.The argument developed here is conceptual and deliberately non-exhaustive. The article does not propose a new synaptic learning rule, nor does it aim to replace established computational or neurobiological theories of memory. Instead, it offers a systems-level architecture for describing how eligibility, selective stabilization, and relational integration may interact across repeated learning episodes to produce enduring differences in mnemonic organization. Neurobiological mechanisms are treated as constraints and possible implementations of the processes described, not as one-to-one correlates of the proposed architectural dimensions. The goal is to clarify an explanatory level between transient processing priorities and the long-term structural organization of memory.An Eligibility-Based Architecture for Memory FormationMemory formation is often described as successful encoding followed by stabilization or consolidation over time. Such descriptions address how a trace may persist, but do not fully explain why only some ongoing patterns acquire access to enduring modification or how the current organization of the system biases that access. Research on memory allocation and synaptic tagging similarly indicates that activation may create an opportunity for lasting change without guaranteeing that such change will occur (Redondo and Morris, 2011;Josselyn and Frankland, 2018). The present framework uses selection to identify this transition from transient activity to potential structural consequence.Selection is not treated as an independent gate acting on neutral input. It emerges from the interaction among the properties of incoming activity, the current state of the system, and its pre-existing representational organization. Intense or novel activity may acquire learning priority partly because of its input properties, while existing organization may preferentially recruit patterns through their relation to prior representations and established processing pathways (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005;Friston, 2010;Feldman and Friston, 2010). These influences are neither mutually exclusive nor fixed in their relative contribution. Selection is therefore neither purely stimulus-driven nor solely mnemonic, but dependent on the interaction between ongoing activity and the system in which it occurs.Within this account, selection refers to the processes through which active patterns acquire eligibility, whereas eligibility refers to the resulting temporary, state-dependent susceptibility to plastic modification. An active pattern may be processed without becoming eligible, and an eligible pattern may still fail to achieve enduring stabilization. Eligibility should therefore not be equated with memory formation or persistence. It functions as a bridge between transient processing and the possibility of lasting structural change. Although this formulation is compatible with biological accounts of synaptic tagging and eligibility traces, eligibility is used here at a broader functional level and does not designate a specific synaptic mechanism or a new learning rule (Redondo and Morris, 2011;Gerstner et al., 2018).The framework does not require selection to be exclusive to memory. Attentional selection and salience detection operate across cognitive domains and may bias which patterns become eligible for plastic modification. Their mnemonic consequences, however, depend on the current state and prior organization of the system. As mnemonic architecture develops, its established representational structure may increasingly constrain which patterns acquire learning priority, without making selection an exclusively mnemonic operation. The relevant question is therefore not whether memory possesses a unique selection mechanism, but how transient processing priorities become translated into persistent and differently organized mnemonic change.Eligibility alone is not sufficient to determine the outcome of memory formation. Once a pattern has become eligible, two further questions arise: the degree to which it becomes selectively stabilized and recurrently available, and whether and how stabilized activity becomes incorporated into broader preexisting representational structure. The following sections develop these dimensions as selective stabilization and relational integration.Once an active pattern has acquired eligibility, it may or may not produce a persistent mnemonic consequence. Selective stabilization denotes the degree to which eligible activity becomes enduring and recurrently available, thereby retaining the capacity to influence subsequent processing. It does not refer to the upstream processes through which learning priority is assigned. The qualifier selective indicates that stabilization depends on prior eligibility and on the conditions under which eligible activity is maintained; it does not imply the operation of a second, independent selection mechanism.Eligibility creates the possibility of plastic modification but does not guarantee the durability of its consequences. Some eligible patterns may remain weak or transient, whereas others may acquire sufficient stability to support later accessibility and recurrent influence on processing. Selective stabilization is therefore graded and conceptually separates susceptibility to plastic change from the persistence of the resulting modification.Attentional allocation, salience-related processing, and precision weighting may contribute to determining which patterns become eligible, but they do not themselves constitute selective stabilization. Neuromodulatory systems should likewise not be confined to the transition from activity to eligibility, because they may constrain encoding and plastic modification across several stages. Cholinergic and noradrenergic influences are therefore treated as biologically plausible constraints on the proposed architecture, rather than as one-to-one correlates of selective stabilization or relational integration. Their mnemonic consequences depend on the current state and prior organization of the system in which they operate (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005;Hasselmo, 2006).Selective stabilization addresses the persistence and recurrent availability of eligible activity, not the pattern or extent of its incorporation into broader representational structure. A strongly stabilized pattern may remain accessible and locally robust while being only weakly integrated with other representations. This further architectural dimension is addressed by relational integration.Whereas selective stabilization concerns the persistence and recurrent availability of eligible activity, relational integration concerns its structural fate within the mnemonic system. It denotes whether, to what extent, and in what pattern stabilized activity becomes incorporated into broader pre-existing representational structure. Through such incorporation, stabilized patterns may become linked to prior episodes, contextual cues, conceptual relations, and higher-order regularities rather than remaining comparatively isolated. In this context, how refers to the pattern and scope of structural incorporation, not to a single underlying biological mechanism.Relational integration is therefore not equivalent to encoding strength or retention. A pattern may be strongly stabilized, readily accessible, and behaviorally influential while remaining only weakly connected to wider representational structure. Measures of persistence, vividness, or retrieval accessibility cannot by themselves establish the degree of relational integration. Its distinctive contribution lies in allowing retained information to participate in broader organization and thereby support flexible retrieval, abstraction, transfer, and cross-context inference (Eichenbaum, 2004;Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Schlichting and Preston, 2015).At a systems level, relational integration is compatible with accounts of hippocampal relational binding and interactions between the hippocampus, prefrontal systems, and distributed cortical representations (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Eichenbaum and Cohen, 2014). These systems provide plausible biological constraints and possible implementations, but relational integration is not identified with a particular region or circuit. Nor is it another term for semantic memory. Episodic and semantic memory describe established forms or systems of memory, whereas relational integration describes a cross-cutting architectural dimension that may operate within and across them.Across repeated learning episodes, differences in relational integration may accumulate into distinct tendencies of long-term mnemonic organization. Broad incorporation may contribute to distributed relational structure, whereas selective stabilization without corresponding integration may produce persistent but comparatively isolated representations. These outcomes are graded organizational tendencies rather than fixed memory types. Their cumulative expression at the level of the wider mnemonic system is considered in the following section.Long-term mnemonic organization emerges from the repeated interaction of eligibility with the architectural dimensions of selective stabilization and relational integration, rather than from any one component in isolation. Individual learning episodes may produce relatively local changes, but differences in which patterns become persistent and in how they are incorporated accumulate over time into large-scale representational structure. This relationship is recursive: the resulting architecture subsequently constrains which activity becomes eligible and how future information can be stabilized and incorporated.At this level of description, global memory organization refers to the large-scale relational patterning of stabilized representations: the degree and manner in which they become interconnected, mutually constraining, and available for reconfiguration beyond the conditions of their original acquisition. This formulation is compatible with network accounts emphasizing the interplay between integration and segregation, while remaining focused on the organization of mnemonic representations rather than proposing a direct mapping onto a particular anatomical network (Bullmore and Sporns, 2009;Sporns, 2013).When eligible patterns are sufficiently stabilized and broadly incorporated into pre-existing representational structure, repeated learning may bias the system toward distributed relational organization. In this organizational tendency, representations remain differentiated while participating in wider relational structure, allowing retained information to support abstraction, generalization, flexible retrieval, and transfer across contexts (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Schlichting and Preston, 2015). This outcome does not require equality between selective stabilization and relational integration or a static equilibrium between them. It reflects their effective conjunction across repeated learning episodes.By contrast, when selective stabilization repeatedly occurs without correspondingly broad relational integration, memory organization may become fragmented or weakly integrated. Under these conditions, representations may remain persistent, vivid, or readily accessible while being only narrowly connected to wider mnemonic structure. Such memories can retain substantial behavioral influence without supporting the same degree of abstraction, generalization, or cross-context inference (Eichenbaum, 2004;Schlichting and Preston, 2015). Fragmentation in this sense does not imply forgetting, weak encoding, or pathology. It denotes a graded organizational tendency in which locally robust representations contribute only to a limited extent to global relational structure.Experiences with similar levels of retention may therefore have different architectural consequences.One stabilized pattern may become incorporated into a distributed relational system and participate in flexible recombination, whereas another may persist primarily as a locally strong but comparatively isolated representation. Over time, the accumulation of such differences modifies the architecture that constrains subsequent selection and learning. Global memory organization is thus both an outcome of prior stabilization and integration and a condition shaping their future operation.Global memory organization does not fully specify the internal structure of a mnemonic system.Architectures with different large-scale organizational tendencies may also contain representational clusters that vary in their local density, stability, and degree of specialization. The term local-core deepening refers to the progressive strengthening of internal relational organization within a circumscribed representational domain across repeated learning episodes. It describes a secondary structural feature of the emerging architecture, rather than an additional mechanism or independent architectural dimension.Local-core deepening may arise when related patterns within a restricted domain repeatedly become eligible, are selectively stabilized, and are reactivated or incorporated in relation to one another. Over time, these recurrent dynamics can produce an internally dense cluster whose elements are strongly interconnected, even when the cluster remains only weakly connected to the wider mnemonic architecture. This process is also recursive: as local organization deepens, the existing cluster may increasingly constrain which related activity becomes eligible and how it is subsequently incorporated.Strong local organization should therefore not be equated with broad relational integration. A memory system may contain highly elaborated local cores while remaining globally fragmented or weakly integrated when connections between these cores and the wider representational architecture are limited. Conversely, within a more distributed organization, local-core deepening may support specialization, domain sensitivity, and efficient access to highly practiced material while remaining connected to broader relational structure. Its functional significance depends not simply on local density, but on the relation between the local core and the architecture in which it is situated.This distinction helps explain how memory may exhibit uneven profiles of robustness, accessibility, and domain-specific competence without requiring different mnemonic within a restricted domain may produce and internal but these properties do not by themselves flexible transfer, abstraction, or cross-context deepening can therefore occur within different forms of global organization, allowing an architecture to be locally globally or globally distributed while selectively domains The properties of incoming activity, transient processing the current state of the system, and its pre-existing representational organization jointly constrain which active patterns acquire eligibility for plastic modification. salience, and precision weighting may contribute to this process but do not themselves constitute selective stabilization. eligible selective stabilization refers to the degree to which activity acquires persistence and recurrent availability, whereas relational integration refers to whether, to what extent, and in what pattern stabilized activity becomes incorporated into wider representational structure. that is only weakly stabilized has limited enduring architectural consequence. selective stabilization by broad relational integration may contribute to distributed relational organization, whereas strong stabilization with limited integration may contribute to fragmented or weakly integrated organization. Neuromodulatory systems may constrain several of this process and are not as one-to-one of architectural The resulting organizational tendencies are as differences in large-scale mnemonic structure. relational organization is by broader among differentiated whereas fragmented or weakly integrated organization persistent but more representations. deepening is as a secondary structural feature that may within global tendency, internal within a restricted representational domain without determining the organization of the system as a repeated learning episodes, these outcomes modify the pre-existing architecture and thereby alter the conditions of subsequent eligibility, stabilization, and present framework is compatible with processing accounts but is not to them. processing, precision refers to the or to in relation to and their influence on and learning 2010;Feldman and Friston, 2010). is therefore not with concerns the or significance of activity to the system, whereas precision concerns its The two may interact in determining learning priority, but they describe conceptually distinct the present precision weighting is treated as one possible to the influence by ongoing activity on it may bias which patterns become to plastic modification. weighting does however, constitute eligibility nor does it selective stabilization. Eligibility concerns susceptibility to whereas selective stabilization concerns the degree to which eligible activity subsequently acquires persistence and recurrent The term precision is therefore used here only in this and limited processing also addresses the formation and of The present argument is not that such accounts cannot enduring mnemonic organization. precision weighting alone does not determine whether a particular becomes persistent or how persistent change is incorporated into broader representational structure. The framework these as distinct architectural questions through selective stabilization and relational integration. activity a strong influence on may contribute to a robust but comparatively local or it may become incorporated into a distributed relational organization that abstraction, transfer, and cross-context inference (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Schlichting and Preston, architecture should therefore be as at a level of It does not replace processing or propose an alternative computational Its contribution is to specify how transient differences in learning priority may be translated into persistent and differently organized mnemonic and how the accumulation of such differences across repeated learning episodes may enduring mnemonic framework from the distinction among learning priority, persistence, and structural Its is that these properties should not be to should therefore of selection or from of retention and from outcomes that depend on relational organization, such as transfer, abstraction, and cross-context the framework that of selective stabilization need not relational integration. with levels of retention or retrieval accessibility may in whether, to what extent, and in what pattern they become incorporated into wider mnemonic organization. vividness, or accessibility should therefore not be treated as sufficient of relational integration (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Schlichting and Preston, 2015). need not be that salience, attentional priority, or influence should eligibility more than they determine long-term mnemonic organization. learning priority may the that activity becomes to plastic but it should not by specify whether that activity becomes stabilized or broadly may therefore produce different long-term outcomes on subsequent stabilization and relational integration 2010;Feldman and Friston, repeated eligibility and selective stabilization within a restricted representational domain should local-core deepening without global relational integration. with related material may produce internal and domain-specific while broader transfer and organization comparatively Once such local structure should also bias subsequent new activity related to an existing core should be more readily into that domain than but The is therefore of mnemonic structural deepening without corresponding of global conditions that relational incorporation should outcomes that depend on flexible structural rather than persistence should support transfer across contexts, relational generalization, and of prior even when retention remains to conditions that primarily selective stabilization (Preston and Eichenbaum, 2013;Eichenbaum and Cohen, 2014). The therefore with outcomes rather than on and state-dependent may be through differences in the relation among eligibility, selective stabilization, and relational integration than through encoding strength The of the framework are those that can persistence from integration, local from global organization, and accessibility from flexible relational framework be of relational organization by retention strength learning priority broad relational integration of subsequent mnemonic or established representational structure influence on later learning. from that levels of retention can produce different outcomes and that persistent traces vary in transfer, abstraction, and as a of their structural present framework is as a systems-level of how the consequences of repeated learning contribute to enduring mnemonic organization, rather than as a of plasticity, or It does not propose a new synaptic or computational learning Instead, it an explanatory level between transient processing priorities and enduring representational architecture. The is therefore to rather than of synaptic hippocampal binding, systems and proposed constructs should not be to one-to-one onto particular or neuromodulatory A single biological mechanism may constrain more than one of the proposed architecture, and architectural dimension may depend on consolidation and prior and broader neurobiological conditions may influence eligibility, selective stabilization, relational integration, or their These influences operate across different and are not to the and prior for may be in the current state and pre-existing representational organization. The present does not to these further concerns relational integration, and global memory organization are than of encoding or retrieval success. The of the framework therefore depends on whether future can learning priority from persistence, and persistence from structural retention with outcomes to transfer, abstraction, contextual and will be to determine whether these properties in the manner such are the framework should be as a architecture rather than a the framework does not imply that fragmented or weakly integrated organization is or that distributed relational organization is and system may different of stabilization and integration. The is that enduring memories may not only in strength or accessibility, but in the degree and pattern of their incorporation into wider representational structure, and that the accumulation of these differences can the architecture within which subsequent learning contribution of the present article is to the of memory formation from trace persistence alone to the organizational fate of eligible The framework that enduring mnemonic organization is not only by whether activity becomes eligible and selectively stabilized, but also by whether, to what extent, and in what pattern stabilized activity becomes incorporated into broader pre-existing representational structure. Selection and mnemonic architecture are recursively the properties of incoming activity, the current state of the system, and its prior organization jointly constrain eligibility, while subsequent stabilization and integration modify that organization and thereby alter the conditions of future formulation separates memory persistence from memory organization more than is often in conventional Strongly vivid, or readily accessible traces need not be broadly integrated, and their persistence alone does not establish that they will support abstraction, transfer, or flexible relational of may therefore contribute to different long-term mnemonic framework does not require selection to be exclusively mnemonic or to be by the same influences across and system Attentional selection, salience and precision weighting may bias which patterns acquire eligibility, while pre-existing mnemonic organization may also constrain what learning Neuromodulatory systems may influence several of this process and should not be one-to-one to eligibility, selective stabilization, or relational integration (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005;Hasselmo, 2010). The relevant question is therefore not whether memory possesses a unique selection mechanism, but how processing priorities within an organized system become translated into persistent and differently organized mnemonic further contribution lies in selective stabilization from relational integration. These dimensions are but selective stabilization concerns the persistence and recurrent availability of eligible activity, whereas relational integration concerns the degree and pattern of its incorporation into wider representational structure. repeated learning episodes, their interaction may contribute to distributed relational organization, fragmented or weakly integrated organization, or locally domains within broader These are and graded organizational tendencies rather than fixed mnemonic stabilization and relational integration are not alternative labels for episodic and semantic memory. Established memory categories describe forms or systems of memory, whereas the present constructs describe cross-cutting architectural dimensions that may operate within and across (Renoult et al., 2019). This distinction also has It between persistence and integration, local and global incorporation, and accessibility and flexible relational The developed provide an for whether these properties and whether established architecture influences subsequent framework is therefore not proposed as an alternative mechanism to processing, or established memory It a different explanatory how activity becomes eligible, acquires persistence, and is incorporated in different into pre-existing representational structure, and how the accumulation of these outcomes the architecture within which later learning Neurobiological mechanisms constrain and these processes without being with them. future between selective stabilization and relational integration, the distinction may how enduring mnemonic organization is both described and
Author: Athanasios Rizos
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7220835040