Development of Memory Systems in the Human Brain

Little is known about the typical development of the neural systems that mediate memory in the human brain.  I will report new studies that examine the relation between brain functions, as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and working memory and long-term memory ability in healthy individuals from ages 8 through young adulthood.  We found evidence for variable trajectories for maturation of high-level visual cortical areas responsive to faces, places, and objects, and these were related to memory performance for the different kinds of materials.  Children exhibited a marked difference in brain activation associated with maintaining a large amount of information in working memory.  For the formation of long-term memories of scenes, children exhibited adult-like levels of activation in medial temporal-regions, but less activation in prefrontal cortical regions.  Overall, these studies offer evidence of different trajectories of development for multiple memory systems of the human brain.