Biozentrum, University of Basel, 4056, Basel, Switzerland
Center for Neural Science, New York University, 10003, New York, New York.
J Neurosci. 2021 Feb 3;41(5):920-926. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1651-20.2020. Epub 2020 Dec 16.
The formation of memories that contain information about the specific time and place of acquisition, which are commonly referred to as "autobiographical" or "episodic" memories, critically relies on the hippocampus and on a series of interconnected structures located in the medial temporal lobe of the mammalian brain. The observation that adults retain very few of these memories from the first years of their life has fueled a long-standing debate on whether infants can make the types of memories that in adults are processed by the hippocampus-dependent memory system, and whether the hippocampus is involved in learning and memory processes early in life. Recent evidence shows that, even at a time when its circuitry is not yet mature, the infant hippocampus is able to produce long-lasting memories. However, the ability to acquire and store such memories relies on molecular pathways and network-based activity dynamics different from the adult system, which mature with age. The mechanisms underlying the formation of hippocampus-dependent memories during infancy, and the role that experience exerts in promoting the maturation of the hippocampus-dependent memory system, remain to be understood. In this review, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the ontogeny and the biological correlates of hippocampus-dependent memories.
记忆的形成依赖于海马体和哺乳动物大脑内侧颞叶中一系列相互连接的结构，这些记忆包含有关获取时间和地点的具体信息，通常被称为“自传体”或“情景”记忆。成年人保留的关于他们生命最初几年的这些记忆非常少，这一观察结果引发了长期以来的争论，即婴儿是否能够形成成年人通过海马体依赖的记忆系统处理的那种记忆，以及海马体是否参与生命早期的学习和记忆过程。最近的证据表明，即使在其回路尚未成熟的时期，婴儿的海马体也能够产生持久的记忆。然而，获取和存储此类记忆的能力依赖于与成年系统不同的分子途径和基于网络的活动动态，这些途径和动态会随着年龄的增长而成熟。在婴儿期形成海马体依赖记忆的机制，以及经验在促进海马体依赖记忆系统成熟方面所起的作用，仍有待理解。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了我们对海马体依赖记忆的个体发生和生物学相关性的理解的最新进展。
