Although a number of studies have highlighted the importance of offline processes for memory, how these mechanisms influence future learning remains unknown. Participants with established memories for a set of initial face-object associations were scanned during passive rest and during encoding of new related and unrelated pairs of objects. Spontaneous reactivation of established memories and enhanced hippocampal-neocortical functional connectivity during rest was related to better subsequent learning, specifically of related content. Moreover, the degree of functional coupling during rest was predictive of neural engagement during the new learning experience itself. These results suggest that through rest-phase reactivation and hippocampal-neocortical interactions, existing memories may come to facilitate encoding during subsequent related episodes.
Keywords: episodic memory; hippocampus; inference; interference; memory integration.