Both the hippocampus (HPC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) contribute to our ability to remember the past and imagine the future1. However, they seem to support complementary functions: the HPC may be critical for memories of individual episodes, whereas the mPFC may encode memory schemas that emerge by extracting commonalities across multiple overlapping events 2-5. We will investigate these functions using fMRI, and track the emergence of schematic representations of a novel environment: the character-rich television show “The Wire”. In three interrelated projects, using representational similarity analysis, we will investigate: (i) the emergence of value-weighted schematic representations in the mPFC, (ii) how these representations get preferentially reinstated during naturalistic experiences, and (iii) the differential contribution of the mPFC versus the HPC to the recall of life-like events.