The development of neural circuits for episodic and general memories

Memories can be divided into two types: memories of specific events, which retain a feeling of when and where they happened ('episodic' memories), and general knowledge, not linked to a time or place it may have been learnt. Many theories of memory assume that we learn by example: all memories are first episodic, then time and experience lead to their integration into general ones. However, the development of memory in young animals runs counter to these theories: during development, learning general knowledge about the world precedes the ability to make episodic memories. Furthermore, damage to the hippocampus (a structure essential for episodic memory) early in life has relatively little effect on general knowledge acquisition. By recording neural activity from developing rodents, these experiments will investigate the neural mechanisms that support general and episodic memory during development, and investigate how these are affected by early-life damage to the hippocampus.