Animal models of episodic memory

Aims of the session

• To understand why animal models of episodic memory might be useful

• To understand the problems of studying episodic memory in animals
• To consider to what extent these problems have been overcome

Why model episodic memory in animals?

• We need to understand the effects of selective lesions within the medial temporal lobe and
beyond
• Episodic memory is the critical failure observed in amnesia
• Do animal studies up to this point look at episodic memory?

Common tests of memory in animals

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So what is episodic memory

“Episodic memory is a recently evolved, late-developing…past-oriented memory system… allowing

one to re-experience… one's own previous experiences.” Endel
Tulving, 2002
involves “autonoetic awareness” = consciousness
“an evolutionary ‘frill’ ”… “probably unique to humans” (c.f. Hampton 2001)
Episodic-like memory in animals has characteristics of episodic memory without having to
demonstrate conscious experience.

So what is episodic memory

Episodic memory: memory which

“receives and stores information about temporally dated episodes or events, and temporal-spatial
relations between them.” Tulving (1983)
i.e. what happened, where and when.
= episodic-like memory

Is there a good test of episodic-like memory in animals?

Scrub jays trained to cache two types of food - peanuts and worms
Worms degrade - so after short delays retrieve worms, after long delays retrieve peanuts

Clayton & Dickinson 1998

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Animal models of episodic memory

Time in episodic memory

Many animals seem to find “when” difficult…
…including humans. We can have good episodic memory with little conscious awareness of “when”
Knowledge of an exact “when” is rare, and is often linked to semantic knowledge rather than
conscious recollection of the timing of the event

What is the role of ‘when’ in what-where-when memory?

“When” allows us to distinguish two similar memories that occurred at different times.
Context (“which”) can also distinguish two similar events
“what-where-which” memory might be equivalent to “what-where-when” memory
“when” might be a type of “which”

Spontaneous object recognition in rats

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Can rats recognize what happened, where and on which occasion?

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Can rats recognize what happened, where and on which occasion?

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Where in the MTL is what-where-which occasion memory dependent upon?

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Does this task meet the criteria for episodic memory?

Content (what-where-which)
Structure
Flexibility
Enduring,
spontaneously acquired, without apparent effort.
? large capacity
BUT is based on recognition paradigm, no demonstration of recollection

Testing recollection in a what-where-which task

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Testing recollection in a what-where-which task

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Animal models of episodic memory

Recollection relies on the hippocampal system but familiarity does not

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Conclusions

• It is important to have models of episodic memory in animals to allow precise lesions to

study this clinically relevant form of memory
• There are major difficulties in assessing episodic memory in humans
• what-where-when memory defined a way of moving beyond conscious experience
• what-where-which memory is another method that reduces the importance of time
• Tasks of recollection and familiarity in these tasks in rats show dissociations between the
processes, with only recollection reliant on the hippocampus