Episodic and Autobiographical Memory: Psychological and Neural Aspects

Recollection of past experiences is often critical for adaptive behavior and plays a primary role in human mental life. Behavioral studies, studies of patients with brain damage, and newly developed brain imaging techniques have begun to isolate this form of memory from that involved in the acquisition of motor skills, and other memory skills that do not involve the conscious recollection of prior experiences. This research demonstrates that a wide network of brain regions is involved in the initial encoding of events into memory, the strategies adopted during attempted memory retrieval, and the successful recovery of stored event representations. The involvement of brain regions spanning frontal, parietal, medial temporal, and midline areas in support of various elements of episodic memory functioning likely reflects both the computational complexity and the adaptive significance of this cognitive capacity.