The computational theory that explains the evolution of phenomenological consciousness

Our representations of the world need to be stable enough to support general knowledge but flexible enough to incorporate new information as our environment changes. How does the human brain manage this stability-plasticity trade-off? We analyzed a large dataset in which participants viewed objects embedded in thousands of natural scenes across many fMRI sessions. Semantic item representations were located by jointly leveraging a voxelwise encoding model to find reliable item representations and a word-embedding model to evaluate semantic content. Within the medial temporal lobe, semantic item representations in hippocampal subfield CA1, parahippocampal cortex, and perirhinal cortex gradually drifted across a period of multiple months. However, rapid plasticity was observed only in parahippocampal cortex, such that item co-occurrence statistics warped item representations within a single session. In conjunction with whole-brain analyses, these results suggest that the brain solves the stability-plasticity trade-off by promoting plasticity in only a subset of semantic regions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.