Functional development of episodic memory in the hippocampus

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Research on the brain and cognitive processes underlying memory development has made significant progress in the last few years. This symposium presents four exciting studies that focused on elucidating the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory development. In the first paper, the authors investigated information presentation in the hippocampus in children (7-10 years) and young adults. They showed that hippocampus in children differentiated overlapping cues whereas detailed neocortical representations supported retrieval in both children and adults. The second paper used representational similarity analysis to investigate the development of contextual binding along the anterior-posterior axis of the hippocampus in 8-, 10-year olds and young adults. The authors found age-related differences in the dissociation of anterior vs. posterior hippocampus in terms of how binding of different information (location and item) are represented. The third paper investigated developmental changes of self-referential encoding of source memory in the brain between children (7-11 years of age) and adults. This study provided further evidence on children’s preferential dependency on the hippocampus during successful memory encoding. The fourth paper applies a longitudinal design in children 4-6 years of age to study the relationship between changes in the brain and source memory improvement. The authors found that changes in memory ability early in life predicted later intrinsic connectivity between hippocampus and cortical regions and that earlier intrinsic hippocampal functional connectivity predicted later changes in source memory. Collectively these four papers provide important novel insights into how functional maturation of the hippocampus supports episodic memory development.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chair

• Xiaoqian Chai, McGill University

Individual Presentations

• Evidence for different hippocampal codes yet similar neocortical reinstatement of memories across development - Presenting Author: Nicole Varga, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Hannah Elizabeth Roome, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Robert Molitor, University of Oregon; Non-Presenting Author: Lucia Martinez; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth Hipskind; Non-Presenting Author: Michael Mack, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Alison Preston, University of Texas at Austin; Non-Presenting Author: Meg Schlichting, University of Toronto

• Representational Similarity Analysis Reveals Development of Contextual Binding Along the Anterior-Posterior Axis of the Hippocampus - Presenting Author: Alireza Kazemi, University of California - Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Simona Ghetti, University of California - Davis

• Hippocampal contribution to self-referential encoding in children - Presenting Author: Hilary Sweatman, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University; Non-Presenting Author: Ross Lawrence, Johns Hopkins University; Non-Presenting Author: Xiaoqian Chai, McGill University

• How behavior shapes the brain and the brain shapes behavior: Insights from memory development - Presenting Author: Fengji Geng, Zhejiang University College of Education; Non-Presenting Author: Morgan Botdorf, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Tracy Riggins, University of Maryland - College Park