Multi-voxel pattern classification differentiates personally experienced event memories from secondhand event knowledge

Description: This dataset assesses whether dissociable brain activation patterns during the retrieval of memories evoked by real-world photographs can be successfully differentiated using multi-voxel pattern analyses and whole-brain searchlight classifications. These analyses focused on two brain networks, which were identified based on a prior meta-analysis comparing studies of autobiographical and laboratory-based memory retrieval, and how they may be differentially sensitive to the original source of the photographs (participants’ lives vs. other individuals’ lives) as well as to the photographs’ history as stimuli (previewed photographs vs. non-previewed photographs). Both multivariate analyses demonstrate that regions associated with the autobiographical memory network were significantly more diagnostic of whether photographs were derived from one’s own life while areas corresponding to the laboratory-based memory network were significantly more diagnostic of whether photographs had been previously encountered.