Research
Ontogenetic Development And Decline Of Memory Functions In Primates
Infantile amnesia is the term used to describe our inability to remember virtually everything from our infancy. After more than a century without answers to this puzzle, neuroscientists are now beginning to identify plausible explanations. A variety of behavioral testing, anatomical tracing, and 2-deoxyglucose and receptor mapping techniques are used in this Laboratory to determine memory processes and neural substrates which become available at different times during maturation. Both normal and neonatally brain-damaged infant monkeys are used as subjects.
The primary goal of our research program is to determine the structural or functional immaturity responsible for infantile amnesia. A second goal is to evaluate the socio-emotional and cognitive development found in monkeys with neonatal damage to the medial temporal-lobe structures, and to develop animal models. These studies will help us to locate maturational abnormalities of the central nervous system that cause children to become autistic, dyslexic, learning disabled, schizophrenic, or mentally retarded. Our third goal is to investigate the time course and the nature of the memory decline in monkeys which accompanies normal aging. These behavioral studies, together with postmortem anatomical and chemical analyses of the brain, will provide important information to help explain memory disorders seen in normal aging and in Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
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The diagrams indicate the flow of visual information in the postulated neural circuits for visual habit formation
(A) and for visual memory formation (B). The delayed maturation of the neural circuit underlying memory formation may be
responsible for the infantile amnesia. |
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