Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Yates, Tristan S.; Fel, Jared; Choi, Dawoon; Trach, Juliana E.; Behm, Lillian; Ellis, Cameron T.; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B.
• 署名单位: Columbia University; The New School; Yale University; Stanford University; Yale University
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-10912
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adt7570
• 发表日期: 2025-03-21
• 页码: 1316-1320
• 关键词: recognition memory; ontogeny; predicts; preferences; familiarity; remember; amnesia; monkeys; novelty

摘要

Humans lack memories for specific events from the first few years of life. We investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a subsequent memory task. Greater activity in the hippocampus during the viewing of previously unseen photographs was related to later memory-based looking behavior beginning around 1 year of age, suggesting that the capacity to encode individual memories comes online during infancy. The availability of encoding mechanisms for episodic memory during a period of human life that is later lost from our autobiographical record implies that postencoding mechanisms, whereby memories from infancy become inaccessible for retrieval, may be more responsible for infantile amnesia.