Behavioral Pharmacology in Juvenile Rats

Episodic memories are memories of one’s personal experience. The hippocampus is the primary brain structure involved in forming episodic memories. How hippocampal neurons operate to encode episodic memories is presently unclear, but appears to involve activity-dependent functional alterations at excitatory synapses, the communication points between neurons. Episodic memories are not formed until late in the postnatal period across mammalian species, suggesting delayed development of the hippocampus. As such, the developmental emergence of episodic memory presents a valuable model for understanding the neuronal properties in the hippocampus that are critical for memory formation.