Episodic Memory

Episodic memory is focused on remembering personal events in a person’s life

(birthday party, wedding day, graduation, etc). These types of memories are

accompanied by who, when, and where aspects of interaction. Thus, one would be able

to recall the people, time, and place of an event that has occurred.

Episodic memory is part of long-term memory, a type of memory that is responsible for

long term storage. Long term memory diverges to explicit memory which is consciously

and intentionally recalled information and implicit memory which is unconsciously

recalled information. Explicit memory branches to two constructs; episodic memory

which refers to specific events in our lives, and semantic memory which refers to factual

knowledge. Episodic memory is a form of explicit memory which indicates that

memories are declarative and that these memories consciously influence behavior and

recall. Episodic memory has a distinguishable feature, which is remembering events in

the past in contrast to semantic memory which knowing factual information (Conway et

al., 2002).

Types of long-term memory. This definition focuses on episodic

memory a type of explicit memory. (Zamir, 2015)
The term episodic memory was introduced in the late 1970s by Endel Tulving. Dr.

Tulving’s work differentiated two important facets of the mind: knowing (semantic

memory) and remembering (episodic memory). Though Dr. Tulving believes that

animals do not have episodic memory researchers argue that rats remember events

and the contexts in which they happened. This belief encourages researchers to run

episodic memory experiments in rodent models (Babb & Crystal, 2006; Eacott, 2004;

Panoz-Brown et al., 2016; Roberts et al., 2008).

CREATING EPISODIC MEMORY

Episodic memory is a recollection of experiences and has a three-step process:

encoding, consolidation/storage, and retrieval.

Encoding is the process of recouping and registering information in the brain. If one is

distracted or not paying attention during an event, this event is less likely to be

remembered in detail through episodic memory. Episodic memory is enhanced when

one is paying attention to what is occurring around them, paying attention is important in

order to effectively encode events or information. Encoding may be enhanced by an

elaboration process. An elaboration process can range from relating events to your

personal life or making connections with thigs one already knows. Effective encoding is

needed in order to form detailed episodic memory.

The next step is consolidation/storage. Consolidation is the process of strengthening

encoded information in order to store it and later retrieve it. Consolidation is more

effective when one has other memories that have some similarity to a new memory.

Consolidation depends on one’s neural pathways. During consolidation memory

neurons fire together to strengthen encoded information in the cortex. This process
takes days to weeks. When encoded information completes consolidation the memory

may be retrieved indefinitely.

The last step in episodic memory is retrieval. Retrieval is the process of consciously

recalling the information that has been encoded and consolidated/stored. Retrieving

episodic memory depends on how effectively you payed attention during the event and

stored the memory. If you were distracted during the encoding process you will be less

likely to retrieve that episodic memory.

Process of encoding, consolidation/storage, and retrieval. (Palmer, 2016)

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY

The hippocampus-a part of the brain- is a necessary structure for episodic memory.

This finding was discovered is 1955 when a man named Henry Moliason got a surgery

to remove his hippocampus to stop his epilepsy. Though his epilepsy vanished

Moliason’s doctors realized that he was unable to form new long-term memories

(Zeidman et al., 2015).

ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY
Moliason’s case study resulted in a plethora of lesioned hippocampus animal studies

which confirmed that the hippocampus as well as the prefrontal cortex are responsible

for episodic memory. In rodent studies, object recency memory (also referred to as

episodic-like memory) is the construct for human episodic memory, which are memories

for personal events.

Episodic memory in animals is a controversial issue among researchers. The issue is

regarding the possibility that the nature of encoding, consolidation, and retrieval is

similar across living creatures. Though we share a considerable amount of our genome

with other creatures, Tulving’s definition of episodic memory mentions unique forms of

human aspects like consciousness. Some researchers came to the consensus that due

to us not knowing if animals have a consciousness there is not enough evidence to

conclude that there is human-like episodic memory in animals however, similar aspects

of episodic memory exist in animals which is referred to as episodic-like memory

(Aggleton & Brown, 1999; Clayton et al., 2001; R. G. M & U, 1997).

It is vital to mention that animal studies allow for more investigative techniques than the

original episodic memory studies which rely on normal human subjects and

neuropsychological patients. Researchers still debate the possibility of studying episodic

memory in animals considering that it is unknown whether animals have a

consciousness however this practice is still done and has resulted in helpful findings

that improve human life (Conway et al., 2002).

The left image is a human brain, and the right image is a rat brain. The hippocampus in
both brains is pink. (Castagnola, 2014)

DISEASE AND AGE

The hippocampus is susceptible to human factors like diet, disease, and inflammatory

conditions. If the hippocampus is impacted, episodic memory is impacted as well. A

common topic in the field is high energy diets. High energy (similar to high calorie) diets

have been linked to cognitive decline in humans (Devore et al., 2009; Eskelinen et al.,

2008; Morris et al., 2004), but the findings are inconsistent. Cournot et el. (2006) and

Dahl et el. (2010) found that during middle age (32 years to 62 years), higher body

mass index was linked with lower cognition scores (Cournot et al., 2006; Dahl et al.,

2010). Other studies also showed a possible association between being overweight in

midlife and risk for dementia (Whitmer et al., 2005). New trends involve researchers

using rodent models of episodic memory to eliminate human factors that may be making

human episodic memory research inconsistent.

Post Write
Sentence one contains a sentence definition. I debated starting the paper with a

sentence definition because it sounded weird to me but after some edits, I decided to

keep the sentence. The sentence includes the item (episodic memory) the category

(memory) and the distinguishing characteristics (remembering personal events). Pages

one, three, and four have graphics. Page one has an image breaking down long term

memory. Page three has an image breaking down encoding, consolidation/storage, and

retrieval. Page four has and image comparing the human and rodent brain. Page two

and three have a principle of operation. In pages two and three I attempt to describe the

principle of operation by taking a step-by-step approach to episodic memory.

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