Influence of brain maturation on memory representation during development

项目总结/摘要 从存储离散事件的系统到编码共性的系统的记忆转换 对高阶认知至关重要，使个体能够超越直接的认知， 经验，以支持灵活的行为，如推理，最佳决策和展望。 解释关系记忆表示在开发过程中是如何出现的， 对记忆行为的暗示（即，回忆过去的事件），但记忆形成的障碍是 也与学业成绩和成年前出现的几种心理健康障碍有关， 包括抑郁症自闭症和精神分裂症然而，尽管迫切需要阐明神经系统是如何 综合记忆痕迹形成的潜在机制在整个发育过程中出现，测量 已证明在表征级形成集成存储器具有挑战性。因此，没有 迄今为止的研究已经研究了驱动整合记忆形成的神经机制， 发展拟议的项目将直接解决这一差距。它建立在理论和实证工作的基础上， 这表明，整合记忆的形成是由前海马（aHPC）支持的。 和内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC），以及研究表明，这种aHPC-mPFC电路继续 在生命的第三个十年中发展，从而强调迫切需要研究这些变化是如何发生的。 结构与记忆整合的长期出现有关。我们预测记忆整合和 因此，儿童时期的推理可能依赖于后验HPC（pHPC）支持的更努力的策略 和横向PFC（lPFC），其中存储器彼此分开地表示，然后 必要时重组。与儿童相反，我们假设青少年将开始依赖于 aHPC-mPFC网络，但不成熟的连接和这些地区发展的快速变化将导致 到不太可靠的存储器集成，使得迹线继续被离散地表示。通过 完成一个实验，儿童（7-8岁），青少年（13-14岁）和成人（25-30岁）将 完成评估记忆整合（扫描）的配对关联推理任务， 推理（未扫描）。多模态神经成像技术（结构MRI，高分辨率）和先进的 分析方法（多体素模式分析，关系相似性分析）将用于测试神经网络 支持记忆整合的机制（目标1），以及这些机制如何与表征性记忆相关。 随着年龄的变化（目标2）。该项目的结果将为理论提供实质性贡献， 代表能力的神经认知发展，并有潜力提供关键的洞察力 旨在改善依赖记忆整合的复杂行为的干预措施，特别是在 具有这种学习能力缺陷的人群（即，患有自闭症、抑郁症或精神分裂症的个体）。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The transformation of memory from a system that stores discrete events to one that codes the commonalities across related events is critical to higher-order cognition, enabling individuals to extend beyond direct experience to support flexible behaviors such as reasoning, optimal decision making, and prospection. Explicating how relational memory representation emerges across development not only has important implications for memory behaviors (i.e., retrieval of past events), but impairments in memory formation are also associated with academic outcome and several mental health disorders that onset before adulthood, including depression, autism, and schizophrenia. Yet despite the critical need to elucidate how the neural mechanisms underlying the formation of integrated memory traces emerges across development, measuring the formation of integrated memories at the representational level has proved challenging. Consequently, no study to date has examined the neural mechanisms driving the formation of integrated memories in development. The proposed project will directly address this gap. It builds on theory and empirical work with adults suggesting that the formation of integrated memories is supported by the anterior hippocampus (aHPC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as well as research showing that this aHPC-mPFC circuit continues to develop through the third decade of life, thus underscoring the critical need to examine how changes in these structures relates to the protracted emergence of memory integration. We predict that memory integration and reasoning in childhood may therefore rely on a more effortful strategy supported by the posterior HPC (pHPC) and lateral PFC (lPFC), wherein memories are represented separately from one another and then recombined when necessary. In contrast to children, we hypothesize that adolescents will begin to rely on the aHPC—mPFC network, but immature connection and rapid changes in development of these regions will lead to less reliable memory integration, such that traces continue to be represented discretely. Through completion of one experiment, children (7-8 years), adolescents (13-14 years), and adults (25-30 years) will complete a paired associate inference task assessing memory integration (scanned) and subsequent reasoning (not scanned). Multimodal neuroimaging techniques (structural MRI, high-resolution) and advanced analysis methods (multi-voxel pattern analysis, relational similarity analysis) will be used to test the neural mechanisms supporting memory integration (Aim 1) and how these mechanisms relate to representational change with age (Aim 2). Results from this project would provide a substantial contribution to theory on the neurocognitive development of representational capacities, and have the potential to provide critical insight into interventions designed to improve complex behaviors that rely on memory integration, especially within populations with deficits in this learning ability (i.e., individuals with autism, depression, or schizophrenia).