Investigating the neural and behavioural development of episodic memory and control

记忆对人类的体验是极其重要的。除了让我们在精神上回到过去，重现特定的事件，记忆也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独特的经历的各个方面，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扮演着重要的角色，让我们分别回忆个人经历和根据我们的知识做出新的决定。然而，对于发育中的大脑如何支持形成、存储和获取来自相互关联的复杂记忆网络的精选信息的能力，几乎一无所知。这项建议将建立在我之前对健康年轻人所做工作的基础上，以填补我们在理解方面的这一关键差距。我之前已经证明，成熟的大脑在大脑的记忆和控制系统的不同部分存储着两种“扭曲”的记忆--详细的(差异化的)和基于要点的(集成的)。记忆在发育过程中的表现和扭曲与成年人相似吗？新出现的观点表明可能不是。与记忆在婴儿期成熟的现有观点相反，新的研究表明，大脑园区和前额叶皮质的记忆和控制区实际上都显示出持续到成年的长期结构和功能发育。由于海马体和前额叶皮质内特定解剖区域及其结构连接的发展不同步，我假设记忆将从早期的僵硬和特定转变为灵活和概括，随着我们进入年轻的成年期。我提出了一系列实验，从三个方面来验证这一理论：(1)记忆竞争是如何通过分化或整合而不是发展来解决的？(2)推理操作如何受到分化和整合平衡的影响，它们是否预测了学业成绩？(3)在婴儿期，记忆是否严格地与形成记忆的背景捆绑在一起？*建议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，我们可以开始考虑不同发育阶段可用的神经机制的差异如何与教育实践相关。最后，拟议研究的核心尖端方法将为该提议支持的本科生和研究生实习生提供独特的培训体验。通过这项工作获得的技能将为我的学员做好准备，为学术界、教育和工业做出创新贡献。

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.