Program in Neurosciences and Mental Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, M5G 1X8, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 3G3, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 3G3, Canada.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2019 Apr;36:100591. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2018.09.002. Epub 2018 Sep 29.
Interest in the ontogeny of memory blossomed in the twentieth century following the initial observations that memories from infancy and early childhood are rapidly forgotten. The intense exploration of infantile amnesia in subsequent years has led to a thorough characterization of its psychological determinants, although the neurobiology of memory persistence has long remained elusive. By contrast, other phenomena in the ontogeny of memory like infantile generalization have received relatively less attention. Despite strong evidence for reduced memory specificity during ontogeny, infantile generalization is poorly understood from psychological and neurobiological perspectives. In this review, we examine the ontogeny of memory persistence and specificity in humans and nonhuman animals at the levels of behavior and the brain. To this end, we first describe the behavioral phenotypes associated with each phenomenon. Looking into the brain, we then discuss neurobiological mechanisms in the hippocampus that contribute to the ontogeny of memory. Hippocampal neurogenesis and critical period mechanisms have recently been discovered to underlie amnesia during early development, and at the same time, we speculate that similar processes may contribute to the early bias towards memory generalization.
对记忆发生发展的兴趣在 20 世纪初兴起，当时最初的观察发现婴儿期和幼儿期的记忆会迅速遗忘。在随后的几年里，人们对婴儿期遗忘症进行了深入的探索，对其心理决定因素进行了全面的描述，尽管记忆持久性的神经生物学仍然难以捉摸。相比之下，记忆发生发展中的其他现象，如婴儿期泛化，受到的关注相对较少。尽管有大量证据表明在发生发展过程中记忆特异性降低，但从心理学和神经生物学的角度来看，婴儿期泛化仍然理解不足。在这篇综述中，我们在行为和大脑层面上检查了人类和非人类动物记忆持久性和特异性的发生发展。为此，我们首先描述了与每种现象相关的行为表型。在深入研究大脑时，我们讨论了有助于记忆发生发展的海马体中的神经生物学机制。最近发现海马神经发生和关键期机制是导致早期发育过程中健忘症的原因，同时，我们推测类似的过程可能有助于早期记忆泛化的偏向。
