Unravelling the circuit changes mediating the development of episodic memory

与其他形式的记忆相比，人类的情景记忆在青少年发育阶段出现得相对较晚，在正常衰老以及神经发育和神经退行性疾病中尤其容易受到干扰。我们最近发现，与非情景记忆任务相比，大鼠在类似情景的物体-地点-语境(OPC)识别任务中表现出记忆的能力也出现在青少年发展的较晚阶段。博士项目的目的是确定调节情节记忆后期出现的回路变化。众所周知，OPC任务依赖于海马体、外侧内嗅觉皮质和内侧前额叶皮质的完整性。在这个博士项目中，学生将利用行为和活体电生理记录技术的组合来描述这一回路中的关键变化，这些变化介导了幼年大鼠情景记忆的出现。该项目的第二部分将使用一种“反向翻译”的方法，即学生将使用一项旨在模仿老鼠研究中使用的OPC任务的行为任务，以测试不同年龄的儿童，以确定情节记忆能力是如何发展的。使用这种方法将使我们能够更密切地了解在老鼠身上的发现如何与儿童情节记忆能力的发展有关，从而允许在未来进行更多的翻译研究。

Episodic memory in humans emerges relatively late during juvenile development in comparison to other forms of memory, and is particularly vulnerable to disruption in normal ageing, as well as in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. We have recently found that the ability of rats to show memory in an episodic-like object-place-context (OPC) recognition task also emerges late in juvenile development compared to non-episodic memory tasks. The aim of the PhD project is to identify the circuit changes that mediate the late emergence of episodic memory. The OPC task is known to depend on the integrity of the hippocampus, as well as the lateral entorhinal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. In this PhD project the student will utilise a combination of behavioural and in vivo electrophysiological recording techniques to characterise the key changes in this circuitry that mediate the emergence of episodic memory in juvenile rats. A second part of the project will be to use a "reverse translation" approach whereby the student will use a behavioural task that has been designed to mimic the OPC task used in the rat studies, to test children of different ages to determine how episodic memory ability develops. Using this approach will enable us to understand more closely how the findings in rats relate to the development of episodic memory abilities in children, allowing for more translational research in the future.