Investigating the neural and behavioural development of episodic memory and control

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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.