In our study, we investigated whether exploring a novel and unpredictable virtual reality environment could retroactively enhance spatial memory in humans, drawing inspiration from the robust behavioural tagging effects seen in rodents. Participants completed a two-day spatial memory task in virtual mazes, where object-location associations were learned under weak (single exposure) or strong (repeated exposure) encoding conditions. After encoding, they explored either a familiar, predictable city or a novel, unpredictable space environment featuring teleportation between distinct sites. Our key finding was a retroactive memory enhancement following novelty exposure but only when the novel environment was experienced on Day 2, after…
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