Unravelling the circuit changes mediating the development of episodic memory

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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.