From vision to memory: How scene-sensitive regions support episodic memory formation during child development

Abstract

Previous brain imaging studies have identified three brain regions that selectively respond to visual scenes, the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the occipital place area (OPA), and the retrosplenial cortex (RSC). There is growing evidence that these visual scene-sensitive regions process different types of scene information and may have different developmental timelines in supporting scene perception. How these scene-sensitive regions support memory functions during child development is largely unknown. We investigated PPA, OPA and RSC activations associated with episodic memory formation in childhood (5–7 years of age) and young adulthood, using a subsequent scene memory paradigm and a functional localizer for scenes. PPA, OPA, and RSC subsequent memory activation and functional connectivity differed between children and adults. Subsequent memory effects were found in activations of all three scene regions in adults. In children, however, robust subsequent memory effects were only found in the PPA. Functional connectivity during successful encoding was significant among the three regions in adults, but not in children. PPA subsequently memory activations and PPA-RSC subsequent memory functional connectivity correlated with accuracy in adults, but not children. These age-related differences add new evidence linking protracted development of the scene-sensitive regions to the protracted development of episodic memory.