2026 Theses Doctoral

Learning and Memory Contributions to Social Cognition and Subjective Connection

Jimenez, Courtney A.

Our social connections shape the quality of our lives. What neural, cognitive, and computational processes underlie our ability to navigate complex social life and form and maintain quality social relationships? In this dissertation, I investigate the learning and memory processes that facilitate social cognition and subjective connection.

In Chapter 1, I analyze functional neuroimaging data during post-encoding rest after participants view social and nonsocial video clips to investigate neural consolidation processes. I find evidence that social content is prioritized for learning via the temporal dynamics of memory consolidation mechanisms in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

In Chapter 2, I analyze participants’ social decision-making behavior in a friendship formation task in order to assess what drives moment-to-moment subjective connection. I find evidence that reinforcement learning constructs applied underlie our subjective experience of social connection, and that real-world social experience relates to learning and decision-making behavior. In Chapter 3, I analyze participants’ memory performance from a friendship formation task to investigate what components of social experience are better remembered. I find evidence that subjective connection and social reward values shape what we remember from our moment-to-moment social experience, and suggest this is relevant for adaptive social behavior.