The Ontogeny of Memory

We spoke to Professor Bernhard Staresina, our Tutorial Fellow in Psychology, about his European Research Council Advanced Grant, the Ontogeny of Memory (MemOnto). This five-year project will focus on the questions of why we don’t retain memories from around the first four years of our lives? And what happens when childhood amnesia starts lifting at three – four – five – years of age? MemOnto will build on Professor Staresina’s earlier work from his ERC Consolidator Grant, when he gained a better understanding of how sleep works in terms of memory formation.

Professor Staresina describes himself as a cognitive neuroscientist who has always been fascinated by memory, particularly ‘episodic memory’. Episodic memory enables us to recall experiences that provide a basis for our identity – without memories of the past, we wouldn’t know who we really are. Memory helps us to anticipate future challenges too. However, we remember very little of the first four years of our lives, during which we learn huge amounts. Psychological foundations are laid in these early years, e.g. attachment, trust, and anxiety, as well as the first seeds of mental health issues. The possibility of accessing more vivid memories from very early childhood and being able to reappraise them is one of the reasons Prof Staresina is interested in these questions.

Something must change in the brain for memories to become more accessible when we reach five – six – seven years of age. One strong possibility is sleep. If some sleep rhythms are not yet fully developed in children, this could explain why they have only short-term memory.

Prof Staresina and his team on this international and multidisciplinary project will use the best methods in cognitive neuroscience to gain a better understanding of infantile amnesia, particularly consolidation and recall. Connecting neurodevelopment, systems neuroscience, and machine learning, they will test hypotheses with human participants but also with mice and rats. Through a collaboration with a leading rodent electrophysiology lab in Oslo, Norway, the team will investigate learning and memory in animal models to see if it is possible to stimulate the brain to produce these waveforms and, thereby accelerate memory development. The findings of this foundational research may have potential to inform future work, with translational impact for humans.

Find out more about Prof Staresina’s work and that of his fellow Oxford ERC Advanced Grant awardees.