Topic: episodic memories

Memory reconsolidation is the mechanism by which consolidated memories are updated in strength and/or content. Thus, memory reactivation can enhance the retention of reactivated items at long delays. An underlying hypothesis to these findings suggests that reconsolidation would be “reactivation specific”, implying that only the reactivated elements after consolidation would be susceptible to modifications. However, episodic memories are intrinsically associative, which implies that they are integrated into interconnected- networks between its elements and the acquisition context. Reactivation

Episodic memories are encoded by sparse populations of neurons activated during an experience. These neural ensembles constitute memory engrams that are both necessary and sufficient for inducing recall even long after memory acquisition. This suggests that following encoding, engrams are stabilized to support reliable memory retrieval. However, little is known about the temporal evolution of engrams over the course of memory consolidation or how it impacts mnemonic properties. Here we employed computational and experimental approaches to examine how the composition and selectivity of engrams

Throughout each day the brain captures snapshots of distinct experiences, forming episodic memories that often last a lifetime. This function depends on the hippocampus – a brain region that is evolutionarily conserved across vertebrates. My lab studies the relationship between hippocampal activity and episodic memory using a unique model organism – the black-capped chickadee. Chickadees are specialist food-caching birds that store thousands of food items at concealed locations in their environment and use memory later in time to retrieve their caches. I will describe our effort in designing b