A research team from the UJI tests how the brain uses context boundaries to guide decision-making in both spatial and abstract environaments

The DAM-Decision and Memory group at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, led by Raphael Kaplan and composed of researchers from Spain, Italy and the United States, has recently published the results of two studies that provide new insights into human brain behaviour in everyday activities such as decision-making and social interaction.

In a new line of research by Dr Kaplan, doctoral students Mariachiara Esposito and Lubna Abdul have shown that the hippocampal and medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain use the boundaries of a context to guide decision-making in both spatial and abstract contexts, as explained in the article "Flexible hippocampal representation of abstract boundaries supports memory-guided choice" recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

The boundaries of an environment help us to navigate in physical space and remember where we have been. The hippocampus is responsible for remembering these positions and is sensitive to changes in these spatial boundaries. What was not clear is whether hypothetical limits, for example the relationship between the size and the price of a flat when you are looking for one for a person or for a family, involve the same regions of the brain in the same way. This research demonstrates that the brain can integrate the limits of different characteristics and adapt them to changes in context and criteria in order to guide everyday decisions such as economic decisions.

Social anchoring

In another of Dr Kaplan's lines of research, doctoral student Marta Rodríguez has shown that subjective preferences affect the way we link different people together, for example when we organise a meeting and need to remember our guests' preferences and the relationship between them. The brain regions responsible for remembering other people's preferences also show us how they differ from our own, even if a comparison between them is not necessary.

This phenomenon, known as ‘social anchoring’, suggests that our personal biases influence how we remember other people's preferences. The results of the study "Social knowledge about others is anchored to self-knowledge in the hippocampal formation", also recently published in the journal PLOS Biology, provide key information on how our cognitive biases shape social memory.

The DAM-Decision and Memory group at the Universitat Jaume I studies the cognitive and neural computations that guide decision-making and long-term memory in everyday life. Its coordinator, Raphael Kaplan, teaches on the Master's Degree in Brain and Behaviour Research, which includes internships in research laboratories linked to this speciality.

The research published in Nature Communications and PLOS Biology is supported by the Research Talent Support Programme of the Valencian Community (CIDEGENT/2021/027), the UJI's Research Plan (UJI-B2022-45) and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PID2021-122338NA-100).

Universities (PID2021-122338NA-100).

Articles

‘Flexible hippocampal representation of abstract boundaries supports memory-guided choice‘. Mariachiara Esposito, Lubna Abdul, Ameer Ghouse, Marta Rodriguez Aramendía, Raphael Kaplan. 2025. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57644-6

‘Social knowledge about others is anchored to self-knowledge in the hippocampal formation’. Marta Rodríguez Aramendia, Mariachiara Esposito, Raphael Kaplan. 2025. PLOS Biology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003050