AWAKE (PID2023-151104NA-I00) is a research project designed to challenge a long-standing assumption in memory science: that the best way to retrieve a memory is to recreate the conditions in which it was originally formed. For decades, the encoding specificityprinciple has dominated our understanding of memory retrieval. But recent findings—including our own work—suggest this view may be too static for such a dynamic system.

In our recent paper, “Evolving Engrams Demand Changes in Effective Cues” (Linde-Domingo & Kerrén, 2025), we propose a new framework: the Dynamic-Cueing Hypothesis. This approach argues that the most effective way to retrieve a memory is not to match how it was first encoded, but to align with how the memory exists now—in its current, possibly transformed, representational state. Over time, episodic memories often shift from detailed perceptual traces to more abstract, conceptually-driven formats. As a result, cues that once worked well may lose their effectiveness, while new, more generalized cues may become better triggers for recall.