Spontaneous reinstatement of episodic memories in the developing human brain.

ABSTRACT: The hippocampus supports episodic memories in development, and yet how the brain stabilizes these memories determines their long-term accessibility. This study examined how episodic memories formed in development are stabilized and whether early-life experiences influence the neural mechanisms involved. Using fMRI and multivariate analyses, we tracked neural reinstatement of newly learned item-location-context associations in youth (N = 49; age_mean = 11.68 years). Hippocampus and visual cortex activity during encoding predicted later memory success. Crucially, spontaneous reinstatement in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during post-encoding rest also predicted memory. In a second sample (N = 32, age_mean = 12.86 years) with early adversity, differential recruitment

SUBMITTER: Yates TS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12458295 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature