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episodic memory

Memory of events, often with emotions attached to them. Recall is not necessarily accurate & confidence can increase although accuracy may decrease. Examples of episodic memory are: 1) remembering what you ate for breakfast 2) remembering the last time you went to the movies 3) remembering last night's baseball game 4) remembering events with emotional context - highly aversive experiences - highly pleasurable experiences Physiology: - long-term potentiation in the hippocampus is essential for episodic memory - boundary-induced neural state changes during encoding of episode predicts subsequent recognition accuracy of events but impairs memory of event order [3] - emotional information is better remembered than neutral information - the amygdala & its interactions with other cerebral regions play a role in the memory-enhancing effect of emotions [4] - the cerebellum is involved in fear conditioning & emotional memory [4] - several cerebellar connections increase inconnection strength corresponding to enhanced emotional memory, including ocerbellar connections to the amygdala & hippocampus, & bidirectional connections the anterior cingulate cortex [4] Genetics: - a region on chromosome 6q24 is linked to exceptional episodic memory in the elderly [2] - MOXD1 is a candidate gene [2]

Specific

SuperAger (exceptional cognition in the elderly)

General

declarative (explicit) memory

References

  1. Journal Watch 23(6):48, 2003 - Egan MF, Kojima M, Callicott JH et al The BDNF val66met polymorphism affects activity-dependent secretion of BDNF and human memory and hippocampal function. Cell. 2003 Jan 24;112(2):257-69. PMID: 1255391
  2. Barral S et al. Common genetic variants on 6q24 associated with exceptional episodic memory performance in the elderly. JAMA Neurol 2014 Oct 13 PMID: 25317765 http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1915580
  3. Zheng J, Schjetnan AGP, Yebra M et al Neurons detect cognitive boundaries to structure episodic memories in humans. Nat Neurosci 2022. 25, 358-368 PMID: 35260859 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01020-w
  4. Fastenrath M, Spalek K, Coynel D et al Human cerebellum and corticocerebellar connections involved in emotional memory enhancement. Proc Natl Acad Sci. USA. 2022. Oct 2 PMID: 36191198 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2204900119