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[2510.15828] GENESIS: A Generative Model of Episodic-Semantic Interaction
Summary
The paper introduces GENESIS, a generative model that integrates episodic and semantic memory, addressing a key challenge in cognitive neuroscience by formalizing their interaction and providing insights into human cognition.
Why It Matters
Understanding the interplay between episodic and semantic memory is crucial for advancing cognitive neuroscience. GENESIS offers a unified framework that can enhance our comprehension of memory processes, potentially impacting fields like AI and psychology by informing models of human cognition and memory systems.
Key Takeaways
- GENESIS models the interaction between episodic and semantic memory using a Cortical-VAE and Hippocampal-VAE.
- The model reproduces key behavioral findings, including memory generalization and recall effects.
- It highlights how capacity constraints affect memory fidelity and the constructive nature of memory processes.
- GENESIS provides insights into systematic distortions in episodic recall due to semantic processing.
- The framework bridges gaps in understanding cognitive processes, offering implications for AI and neuroscience.
Quantitative Biology > Neurons and Cognition arXiv:2510.15828 (q-bio) [Submitted on 17 Oct 2025 (v1), last revised 18 Feb 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:GENESIS: A Generative Model of Episodic-Semantic Interaction Authors:Marco D'Alessandro, Leo D'Amato, Mikel Elkano, Mikel Uriz, Giovanni Pezzulo View a PDF of the paper titled GENESIS: A Generative Model of Episodic-Semantic Interaction, by Marco D'Alessandro and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:A central challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to explain how semantic and episodic memory, two major forms of declarative memory, typically associated with cortical and hippocampal processing, interact to support learning, recall, and imagination. Despite significant advances, we still lack a unified computational framework that jointly accounts for core empirical phenomena across both semantic and episodic processing domains. Here, we introduce the Generative Episodic-Semantic Integration System (GENESIS), a computational model that formalizes memory as the interaction between two limited-capacity generative systems: a Cortical-VAE, supporting semantic learning and generalization, and a Hippocampal-VAE, supporting episodic encoding and retrieval within a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture. GENESIS reproduces hallmark behavioral findings, including generalization in semantic memory, recognition, serial recall effects and gist-based distortions in episodic memory, and constructive episodic simu...