A functional MRI study of 22 toddlers finds that hippocampal activation was higher when the children, while sleeping, heard a song they had previously learned than when they heard a novel song, regardless of whether the learned song was played as recorded or in reverse; the highest hippocampal response was observed in toddlers who correctly remembered the place where they learned the song and a toy associated with it, suggesting the role of the hippocampus in the early development of human episodic memory.
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Article #18-05572: "Memory-related hippocampal activation in the sleeping toddler," by Janani Prabhakar, Elliott G. Johnson, Christine Wu Nordahl, and Simona Ghetti.
MEDIA CONTACT: Janani Prabhakar, University of California, Davis, CA; tel: 267-736-1929; e-mail: < janani.prabhakar@gmail.com >; Simona Ghetti, University of California, Davis, CA; tel: 530-747-3803; e-mail: < sghetti@ucdavis.edu >
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences