The case for episodic memory in animals

Abstract

The conscious recollection of unique personal experiences in terms of their details (what), their locale (where) and temporal occurrence (when) is known as episodic memory and is thought to require a ‘self-concept’, autonoetic awareness/conciousness, and the ability to subjectively sense time. It has long been held that episodic memory is unique to humans, because it was accepted that animals lack a ‘self-concept’, ‘autonoetic awareness’, and the ability to ‘subjectively sense time’. These assumptions are now being questioned by behavioral evidence showing that various animal species indeed show behavioral manifestations of different features of episodic memory such as, e.g. ‘metacognition’, ‘conscious recollection’ of past events, ‘temporal order memory’, ‘mental time travel’ and have the capacity to remember personal experiences in terms of what happened, where and when. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview on the current progress in attempts to model different prerequisites and features of human episodic memory in animals and to identify possible neural substrates of animal episodic memory. The literature covered includes behavioral and physiological studies performed with different animal species, such as non-human primates, rodents, dolphins and birds. The search for episodic memory in animals has forced researchers to define objective behavioral criteria by which different features of episodic memory can be operationalized experimentally and assessed in both animals and humans. This is especially important because the current definition of episodic memory in terms of mentalistic constructs such as ‘self’, ‘autonoetic awareness/consciousness’, and ‘subjectively sensed time’, not only hinders animal research on the neurobiology of episodic memory but also research with healthy human subjects as well as neuropsychiatric patients with impaired language or in children with less-developed verbal abilities.