How to optimize knowledge construction in the brain

Well-structured knowledge allows us to quickly understand the world around us and make informed decisions to adequately control behavior. Knowledge structures, or schemas, are presumed to aid memory encoding and consolidation of new experiences so we cannot only remember the past, but also guide behavior in the present and predict the future. However, very strong schemas can also lead to unwanted side effects such as false memories and misconceptions. To overcome this overreliance on a schema, we should aim to create robust schemas that are on the one hand strong enough to help to remember and predict, but also malleable enough to avoid such undesirable side effects. This raises the question as to whether there are ways to deliberately influence knowledge construction processes, with the goal to reach such optimally balanced schemas. Here, we will discuss how the mnemonic processes in our brains build long-term knowledge and, more specifically, how different phases of memory formation (encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation) contribute to this schema build-up. We finally provide ways how to best keep a balance between generalized semantic and detailed episodic memories, which can prove very useful in, e.g., educational settings.