Investigating the neural and behavioural development of episodic memory and control

记忆对人类的经历非常重要。除了让我们在精神上回到过去，重新经历特定的事件，记忆还从特定的事件中抽象出来，形成我们的一般知识。因此，我们的记忆系统必须同时代表我们经历的独特方面，同时也突出它们的共同特征。从童年开始，这两种类型的记忆在我们的日常生活中都扮演着重要的角色，它们让我们分别回忆起个人经历，并根据我们的知识做出新的决定。然而，对于发育中的大脑是如何支持形成、存储和获取由相互关联的记忆组成的复杂网络中的精选信息的能力，我们实际上一无所知。这项建议将建立在我之前对健康年轻人的研究基础上，以填补我们理解中的这一关键空白。我之前已经证明，成熟的大脑将两种“扭曲的”记忆——详细的（分化的）和基于要点的（整合的）——储存在大脑记忆和控制系统的不同部分。在发育过程中，记忆的再现和扭曲是否与成人相似？新出现的观点表明，可能不会。与现有的记忆在婴儿期成熟的观点相反，新的研究表明，大脑海马和前额皮质的记忆和控制区域实际上分别显示出持续到成年早期的结构和功能发育。由于海马体和前额叶皮层内的特定解剖区域及其结构连接的发展不同步，我假设，随着我们进入青年期，记忆将从生命早期的主要僵硬和特定转变为灵活和一般化。我提出了一系列的实验来测试这一理论，在三个调查线：(1)如何通过分化或整合的发展解决记忆竞争？(2)推理操作如何受到分化与整合平衡的影响，并预测学业成绩？(3)在婴儿时期，记忆是否与它们形成的环境紧密相连？提出的工作将为一个新的机制框架提供经验支持，该框架将产生关于记忆行为如何在发展过程中出现和变化的新预测。通过使用神经科学方法在大脑中建立行为基础，我们可以开始考虑在不同发展阶段可用的神经机制的差异如何与教育实践相关。最后，本研究的核心前沿方法将为本提案所支持的本科生和研究生学员提供独特的培训体验。通过这项工作获得的技能将使我的学员为学术界、教育界和工业界做出创新贡献做好准备。

Memory is profoundly important to the human experience. In addition to allowing us to mentally travel back in time to re-live specific episodes, memory also abstracts away from particular events to form our general knowledge. Accordingly, our memory system must simultaneously represent aspects of our experiences that are unique, while also highlighting their shared features. Beginning in childhood, both types of memory play an important role in our everyday lives by allowing us to recall individual experiences and make new decisions based on our knowledge, respectively. Yet, virtually nothing is known about how the developing brain supports the ability to form, store, and access select information from a complex web of interrelated memories. This proposal will build on my prior work in healthy young adults to fill this critical gap in our understanding. I have previously shown that the mature brain stores both kinds of “distorted” memoriesdetailed (differentiated) and gist-based (integrated)in separate parts of the brain's memory and control systems. Are memories representedand distortedsimilarly over development as they are in adults?Emerging perspectives suggest probably not. Contrary to existing ideas that memory matures in infancy, new research reveals that both the memory and control regions of the brainhippocampus and prefrontal cortex, respectivelyin fact show protracted structural and functional development that continues into young adulthood. Due to asynchrony in the development of specific anatomical regions within hippocampus and prefrontal cortex as well as their structural connections, I hypothesize that memories will shift from being primarily rigid and specific early in life to flexible and generalized as we reach young adulthood. I propose a series of experiments to test this theory in three lines of inquiry: (1) how is memory competition resolved via differentiation or integration over development?; (2) how are reasoning operations impacted by the balance of differentiation and integration, and do they predict academic achievement?; and (3) in infancy, are memories rigidly bound to the context in which they were formed? The proposed work will provide empirical support for a novel mechanistic framework that will generate new predictions about how memory behaviours emerge and change across development. By grounding behaviour in the brain through the use of neuroscience approaches, we can begin to consider how differences in the neural machinery available at different points in development are relevant to educational practice. Finally, the cutting-edge methods central to the proposed research will provide a unique training experience for the undergraduate and graduate trainees supported by this proposal. Skills gained through this work will prepare my trainees to make innovative contributions to academia, education, and industry.