Hippocampal maturity promotes memory distinctiveness in childhood and adolescence

Citation

Keresztes A, Bender A, Bodammer N, Lindenberger U, Shing YL & Werkle-Bergner M (2017) Hippocampal maturity promotes memory distinctiveness in childhood and adolescence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (34), pp. 9212-9217. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710654114

Abstract
Adaptive learning systems need to meet two complementary and partially conflicting goals: detecting regularities in the world versus remembering specific events. The hippocampus (HC) keeps a fine balance between computations that extract commonalities of incoming information (i.e., pattern completion) and computations that enable encoding of highly similar events into unique representations (i.e., pattern separation). Histological evidence from young rhesus monkeys suggests that HC development is characterized by the differential development of intrahippocampal subfields and associated networks. However, due to challenges in the in vivo investigation of such developmental organization, the ontogenetic timing of HC subfield maturation remains controversial. Delineating its course is important, as it directly influences the fine balance between pattern separation and pattern completion operations and, thus, developmental changes in learning and memory. Here, we relate in vivo, high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging data of HC subfields to behavioral memory performance in children aged 6–14 y and in young adults. We identify a multivariate profile of age-related differences in intrahippocampal structures and show that HC maturity as captured by this pattern is associated with age differences in the differential encoding of unique memory representations.

Keywords
hippocampal subfields; episodic memory; specificity; pattern separation; child development

Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Volume 114, Issue 34

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