Physiology & behavior
-
Physiology & behavior · Aug 2001
Comparative StudyTesting episodic memory in animals: a new approach.
Episodic memory involves the encoding and storage of memories concerned with unique personal experiences and their subsequent recall, and it has long been the subject of intensive investigation in humans. According to Tulving's classical definition, episodic memory "receives and stores information about temporally dated episodes or events and temporal-spatial relations among these events." Thus, episodic memory provides information about the 'what' and 'when' of events ('temporally dated experiences') and about 'where' they happened ('temporal-spatial relations'). The storage and subsequent recall of this episodic information was thought to be beyond the memory capabilities of nonhuman animals. ⋯ There is now a pressing need to adapt these experimental tests of episodic memory for other animals. Given the potential power of transgenic and knock-out procedures for investigating the genetic and molecular bases of learning and memory in laboratory rodents, not to mention the wealth of knowledge about the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the rodent hippocampus (a brain area heavily implicated in episodic memory), an obvious next step is to develop a rodent model of episodic-like memory based on the food-storing bird paradigm. The development of a rodent model system could make an important contribution to our understanding of the neural, molecular, and behavioral mechanisms of mammalian episodic memory.