Influence of brain maturation on memory representation during development

项目摘要/摘要 内存从存储离散事件的系统向编码共性的系统的转变 跨相关事件对更高层次的认知至关重要，使个人能够超越直接 支持灵活行为的经验，如推理、最优决策和预测。 解释关系内存表示如何在整个开发过程中出现不仅具有重要的意义 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精神健康障碍有关， 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是如何 整合记忆痕迹形成的潜在机制在发育、测量 事实证明，在表征层面上形成综合记忆具有挑战性。因此，不 到目前为止的研究已经检查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， 成年人认为整合记忆的形成是由前海马体(AHPC)支持的 和内侧前额叶皮质(MPFC)，以及研究表明，这个aHPC-mPFC回路继续 在生命的第三个十年中发展，从而强调了审查这些变化的迫切需要 结构与记忆整合的长期出现有关。我们预测，内存集成和 因此，童年时期的推理可能依赖于后脑HPC(PHPC)支持的更费力的策略。 和横向PFC(LPFC)，其中存储器彼此分开地表示，然后 在必要时进行重组。与儿童不同，我们假设青少年将开始依赖于 一个HPC-mPFC网络，但不成熟的连接和快速变化的发展将导致这些地区 涉及可靠性较低的存储器集成，使得轨迹继续被离散地表示。穿过 完成一项实验，儿童(7-8岁)、青少年(13-14岁)和成人(25-30岁)将 完成成对的关联推理任务，评估内存集成(扫描)和后续任务 推理(未扫描)。多模式神经成像技术(结构磁共振、高分辨率)和高级 将使用分析方法(多体素模式分析、关系相似性分析)来测试神经 支持记忆整合的机制(目标1)以及这些机制与表征的关系 随年龄变化(目标2)。这一项目的结果将为有关 神经认知发展的表征能力，并具有提供批判性洞察力的潜力 旨在改善依赖记忆整合的复杂行为的干预措施，特别是在 这种学习能力有缺陷的人群(即自闭症、抑郁症或精神分裂症患者)。

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).