Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

From Scholarpedia
Endel Tulving and Karl K. Szpunar (2009), Scholarpedia,
revision #67580 [link to/cite this
4(8):3332.
doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.3332
article]
Curator: Dr. Endel Tulving, Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest, University of Toronto, CANADA
Curator: Dr. Karl K. Szpunar, Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest, University of Toronto, CANADA
Episodic memory is the name given to the capacity to consciously remember personally experienced events and
situations. It is one of the major mental (cognitive) capacities enabled by the brain.

1 Example
2 Overview
3 Terminology
4 Relations between episodic and semantic memory
4.1 Common features
4.2 Unique features of episodic memory
5 Episodic memory: 2009
6 Open issues
6.1 Autobiographical memory
6.2 Episodic memory in nonhuman animals
6.3 Adaptive value
7 References
8 Recommended readings
9 See also

In the prototypical act of exercising the capacity of episodic memory one may remember a recent trip to Paris, mentally
reliving events that happened there, in the minds eye seeing again the places visited, sights seen, sounds heard, aromas
smelled, and people met.

Memory is an umbrella term that covers a variety of different forms of acquisition, retention, and use of habits, skills,
knowledge, and experience. Those who study memory have found it useful to assume that different forms of learning and
memory are subserved by different memory systems--organized collections of neurocognitive components that work
together to perform functions that other collections of components cannot perform, or cannot perform as well. An important
objective of research has to do with the identification of these memory systems, specification of their properties, and
delineation of the nature of the relations among them.
Historically, the most basic distinction is that between procedural memory (an action system that is expressed through
behavior; e.g., when riding a bicycle) and declarative memory (a cognitive system that is expressed through propositional

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

knowledge; e.g., when taking a classroom test). Both procedural and declarative memory are seen as consisting of a
number of subdivisions (Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001; Schacter & Tulving, 1994; Schacter, Wagner, & Buckner, 2000;
Squire, 1992; Squire & Kandel, 1999; Squire & Zola, 1998). This article describes a theory of episodic memory, one of
the two assumed subdivisions of declarative memory. However, because the theory of episodic memory can be only
incompletely understood in isolation of the other assumed subdivision of declarative memory, semantic memory--the
system that enables us to acquire and retain factual knowledge about the world (e.g., knowing that Paris is a nice city to
visit in the springtime) and from which episodic memory is thought to have evolved, much of the discussion will focus on
episodic memory in relation to semantic memory.

In this article, the term episodic memory refers to a unique memory system (or capacity) of the brain. However, that is
not the only meaning of episodic memory that one will find in the literature. For instance, the term is often used to describe
the specific experience (content) that comes to mind when exercising the capacity of episodic memory and the
accompanying feeling (phenomenology) that one is currently reliving that previous experience. In the interest of clarity, this
article will refer to the contents of episodic memory as remembered experiences and the phenomenological experience as
remembering. A similar issue exists in relation to the concept of semantic memory. Presently, the term semantic
memory also stands for a capacity of the brain. The structured contents of the semantic memory system are referred to as
knowledge and the phenomenological experience as knowing (Gardiner & Richardson-Klavehn, 2000).

According to the theory of episodic memory, the assumed evolutionary sequence of episodic memory growing out of
semantic memory is reflected in the global, monohierarchical relation between the two. That is, episodic memory shares
with semantic memory many features that distinguish both of them (i.e., all of declarative memory) from other major
subdivisions of memory, yet it also possesses features that it does not share with any other memory system, including
semantic memory (Mishkin, Suzuki, Gadian, & Vargha-Khadem, 1997; Tulving, 1995). The monohierarchical relation also
implies that episodic memory depends on semantic memory in its operations and cannot function without relevant
components of semantic memory, whereas semantic memory does not depend on episodic memory in its operations and
can function without episodic memory. This kind of a relation between the two memory systems mimics many other
similar relations in the living world. As a single example, consider the relation between a visual system that has no sense
of color and a visual system that does: The latter has everything that the former has, plus more.
What makes episodic memory special is that it makes possible mental time travel into the past, as well as into the future,
as will be seen below. No other memory system has the same capacity, at least not in the sense that episodic memory
does.

Common features
Some of the features (or properties) that episodic memory shares with semantic memory are:
Both systems allow the organism to know about aspects of its world that are not immediately present.
Encoding of new information [converting perceptual and cognitive input into memory traces (engrams)] is fast and
may occur on a single trial.
Encoded information (memory traces) may be multimodal (polymodal).
Storage of encoded information is transmodal: both remembered experiences and knowledge can be stored
independent of the modality through which they were acquired.
Storage of information is highly structured.
Storage of information is highly sensitive to context.

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

Stored information is representational (isomorphic) with what is or could be in the world.

Access to stored information during retrieval is flexible, within limits.
Behavioral expression of what is retrieved is optional and not obligatory. Thus, it is possible to hold the retrieved
information online, and just contemplate it.
Retrieval of information in both systems requires consciousness. It is not possible to directly retrieve information
from either episodic or semantic memory nonconsciously. Of course, various processes that underlie the retrieval of
remembered experiences and knowledge may take place beyond conscious awareness.
The operations of neither system depend on language, although language may greatly facilitate them.
The shared features of both systems are present in a wide range of animals; they are highly evolved in mammals and
birds.
The operations of both systems are subserved by shared, widely distributed, cerebral cortical and subcortical neural
networks; especially critical are those in medial temporal lobes and the diencephalon.
Any one of these properties applies equally well to both episodic and semantic memory. It is their conjunction that allows
us sometimes to classify both episodic and semantic memory together under the general label of declarative (also referred
to as cognitive or explicit) memory, without further differentiating between them. In many situations, both in the laboratory
and real life, such generalization is justifiable. In others, however, it is not, because episodic memory, in addition to the
properties listed above, also possesses unique properties that are shared by neither semantic nor any other memory
system.

Unique features of episodic memory

Some of the features (or properties) that are unique to episodic memory are:
The key function of episodic memory is to allow the individual to remember personal past happenings as such;
semantic memory is not capable of this function.
This remembering takes the form of mentally traveling in subjectively experienced time. Semantic memory does
not have anything special to do with time, other than the (trivial) fact that the knowledge that is brought to mind in
the course of exercising this capacity was once learned in the past.
Episodic memory, unlike semantic memory, is self-centered. The operations of episodic memory are predicated on
one's conscious awareness of oneself as an independent entity that is separate from the rest of the world. In the
absence of such awareness, episodic remembering is not possible.
Episodic remembering expresses itself phenomonally through the medium of a distinctive form of conscious
awareness that is familiar to all people in the sense that they know when they are remembering and not perceiving,
or imagining, or daydreaming, or having any other kind of conscious experience. The conscious awareness
accompanying semantic knowing has a different flavor, clearly distinct from that of remembering. The two kinds of
consciousness involved in episodic remembering and semantic knowing have been named autonoetic and noetic,
respectively (Tulving, 1985; Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997).
Episodic remembering requires the activation, by way of voluntary or involuntary processes, of a special kind of
mental state that has been called episodic retrieval mode. The operational default memory state is semantic,
characterized by noetic consciousness.
The ontogenetic development of episodic memory is delayed in relation to that of semantic memory: Children
acquire a great deal of knowledge about the world they live in before they are aware of their own past personal
experiences (Nelson & Fivush, 2004).
Episodic memory tends to be more vulnerable to disease, injury, and the ravages of old age than is semantic

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

memory. Brain damage is more likely to impair episodic remembering than semantic knowing, and in dementias
such as Alzheimer's disease the impairment of episodic memory is frequently the first symptom to appear
(Kitchener, Hodges, & McCarthy, 1998; Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom, 2002; Rosenbaum et al., 2005; Vargha-Khadem
et al., 1997).
Episodic memory that all healthy humans possess probably does not exist in other animals, although episodic-like
memory capacities have already been identified in several species (Clayton, Bussey, & Dickinson, 2003; Griffiths,
Dickinson, & Clayton, 1999; Olton, 1984).
Episodic memory is dependent on neural networks that extend beyond those that subserve the operations of
semantic memory (Aggleton & Pearce, 2001; Nyberg et al., 2000).
Some of these features are more reasonable in light of empirical evidence than others. The whole enterprise of studying
multiple memory systems is in an early stage. Therefore a great deal of further work and thought is required, and indeed is
being spent, on many aspects of the problem (Dere, Easton, Nadel, & Huston, 2008; Szpunar & McDermott, 2008; Tulving,
2002a).
Today, a thumbnail description of episodic memory can be defined in terms of these unique features, against the backdrop
of the shared features.

Episodic memory is a recently evolved, late developing, and early deteriorating brain/mind (neurocognitive) memory
system. It is oriented to the past, more vulnerable than other memory systems to neuronal dysfunction, and probably
unique to humans. It makes possible mental time travel through subjective time--past, present, and future. This mental time
travel allows one, as an owner of episodic memory (self), through the medium of autonoetic awareness, to remember
one's own previous thought about experiences, as well as to think about one's own possible future experiences. The
operations of episodic memory require, but go beyond, the semantic memory system. Retrieving information from episodic
memory (remembering) requires the activation, by way of voluntary or involuntary processes, of a special mental set,
dubbed episodic retrieval mode. The neural components of episodic memory comprise a widely distributed network of
cerebral cortical and subcortical brain regions that overlap with and extend beyond the networks subserving other memory
systems. The essence of episodic memory lies in the conjunction of three concepts--self, autonoetic awareness, and
subjective time.
The remainder of this article summarizes some of the open issues concerning episodic memory, issues that remain in the
focus of investigators.

Autobiographical memory
Episodic memory is closely related to autobiographical memory. That term, however, most often is used in the sense of
significant life experiences, either remembered or known. That is, people typically include facts such as when and where
they were born as an important part of their life story although these are necessarily acquired through the semantic rather
than episodic system. Episodic memory, on the other hand, has to do with remembered experiences alone (with regard to
one's past). The distinction between episodic and semantic autobiographical memory receives support from relevant
neuroimaging studies (Levine et al., 2004; Svoboda, McKinnon, & Levine, 2006).

Episodic memory in nonhuman animals

There exists essentially universal agreement among all practitioners of the science of memory that many species other than
humans possess highly developed semantic memory systems. These allow them to acquire complex and intricate
knowledge of various sorts about their own ecological niches (as well as other aspects) of the world.

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

Whether or not species other than humans possess episodic memory depends on how episodic memory is defined. If the
definition is given along the lines of the properties of episodic memory that are shared with semantic memory, then the
answer to the question is definitely positive. However, in terms of the extended definition, including both the shared and
unique lists, the answer is negative--other species probably do not possess the kind of episodic memory that humans do.
At least, we are not aware of any findings that unequivocally attribute autonoetic consciousness to nonhuman animals
(Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997, 2007).

Adaptive value
When it comes to humans, the question as to the survival value of episodic memory arises. Here it is possible to think of
plausible evolutionary drivers that may have played a role in initiating and maintaining the ability to autonoetically reflect
on what has happened in the past. One such thought begins with the assumption that subjectively apprehended time, a key
feature of evolved episodic memory, extends not only backwards to the past, but also forwards to the future. Ones ability
to imagine what the future might bring allows one to prepare for the various eventualities in a way that a more restricted
projection of the past would not. Most specifically, if one can anticipate possible untoward happenings at a time that has
not yet arrived, one can take measures to ward them off now, in the present (Tulving, 2002b, 2005).
The power of episodic future thinking, as the ability has been dubbed, is most clearly visible in the kinds of cultures and
civilizations human beings have created. Many aspects of these would not be possible in the absence of the ability to
mentally envisage the future (Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997). Indeed, evidence continues to accumulate suggesting that
episodic memory and episodic future thinking share similar neural correlates, that both are similarly impaired in specific
cases of brain damage, and that both share similar ontogenetic trajectories and subsequent decline in aging (Atance &
ONeill, 2001; Schacter & Addis, 2007; Szpunar, in press).

Aggleton, J. P., & Pearce, J. M. (2001). Neural systems underlying episodic memory: Insights from animal research.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 356, 1483 1491.
Atance, C. M., & ONeill, D. K. (2001). Episodic future thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 533-539.
Clayton, N. S., Bussey, T. J., & Dickinson, A. (2003). Can animals recall the past and plan for the future? Nature
Reviews Neuroscience, 4, 685-691.
Dere, E., Easton, A., Nadel, L., & Huston, J. P. (2008). Handbook of episodic memory. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Eichenbaum, H., & Cohen, N. J. (2001). From conditioning to conscious recollection: Memory systems of the
brain. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gardiner, J. M., & Richardson Klavehn, A. (2000). Remembering and knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik
(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 229 244). New York: Oxford University Press.
Griffiths, D. P., Dickinson, A., & Clayton, N. S. (1999). Declarative and episodic memory: What can animals
remember about their past? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 74 80.
Kitchener, E. G., Hodges, J. R., & McCarthy, R. (1998). Acquisition of post morbid vocabulary and semantic facts
in the absence of episodic memory. Brain, 121, 1313 1327.
Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (2002). Memory and temporal experience: The effects of episodic
memory loss on an amnesic patient's ability to remember the past and imagine the future. Social Cognition, 20,
353-379.
Levine, B., Turner, G. R., Tisserand, D., Hevenor, S. J., Graham, S. J., & McIntosh, A. R. (2004). The functional
neuroanatomy of episodic and semantic autobiographical remembering: A prospective functional MRI study.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1633-1646.

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

Mishkin, M., Suzuki, W. A., Gadian, D. G., & Vargha Khadem, F. (1997). Hierarchical organization of cognitive
memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 352, 1461 1467.
Nelson, K., & Fivush, R. (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social-cultural developmental
theory. Psychological Review, 111, 486-511.
Nyberg, L., Habib, R., Tulving, E., Cabeza, R., Houle, S., Persson, J., & McIntosh, A. R. (2000). Large scale
neurocognitive networks underlying episodic memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 163-173.
Olton, D. S. Comparative analysis of episodic memory. Behavioral and brain sciences, 7, 250-251.
Rosenbaum, R. S., Kohler, S., Schacter, D. L., Moscovitch, M., Westmacott, R., Black, S. E., Gao, F., & Tulving, E.
(2005). The case of K.C.: Contributions of a memory-impaired person to memory theory. Neuropsychologia, 43,
989-1021.
Schacter, D. L., & Addis, D. R. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past
and imagining the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 362, 773-786.
Schacter, D. L., & Tulving, E. (1994). What are the memory systems of 1994? In D.L. Schacter & E. Tulving
(Eds.), Memory systems 1994 (pp. 1 38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schacter, D. L., Wagner, A. D., & Buckner, R. L. (2000). Memory systems of 1999. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik
(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 627-643). New York: Oxford University Press.
Squire, L. R. (1992). Memory and the hippocampus: a synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys, and humans.
Psychological Review, 99, 195-231.
Squire, L. R., & Kandel, E. R. (1999). Memory: From mind to molecules. New York: Freeman & Co.
Squire, L. R., & Zola, S. M. (1998). Episodic memory, semantic memory, and amnesia. Hippocampus, 8, 205 211.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (1997). Mental time travel and the evolution of the human mind. Genetic,
Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 123, 133-167.
Suddendorf, T., & Corballis, M. C. (2007). The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique
to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30, 299-313.
Svoboda, E., McKinnon, M. C., & Levine, B. (2006). The functional neuroanatomy of autobiographical memory: A
meta-analysis. Neuropsychologia, 44, 2189-2208.
Szpunar, K. K. (in press). Episodic future thought: An emerging concept. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Szpunar, K. K., & McDermott, K. B. (2008). Episodic memory: An evolving concept. In D. Sweat, R. Menzel, H.
Eichenbaum & H. L. Roediger III (Eds.), Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (pp. 491-510). Oxford:
Elsevier.
Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1-12.
Tulving, E. (1995). Organization of memory: Quo vadis? In M.S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences (pp.
839-847). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tulving, E. (2002a). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 1-25.
Tulving, E. (2002b). Chronesthesia: Awareness of subjective time. In D. T. Stuss & R. C. Knight (Eds.), Principles
of Frontal Lobe Function (pp. 311-325). New York: Oxford University Press.

Episodic memory - Scholarpedia

Tulving, E. (2005). Episodic memory and autonoesis: Uniquely human? In H. S. Terrace & J. Metcalfe (Eds.), The
missing link in cognition: Origins of self-reflective consciousness (pp. 3-56). New York: Oxford University Press.
Vargha Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Watkins, K. E., Connelly, A., Van Paesschen, W., & Mishkin, M. (1997).
Differential effects of early hippocampal pathology on episodic and semantic memory. Science, 277, 376 380.
Wheeler, M. A., Stuss, D. T., & Tulving, E. (1997). Toward a theory of episodic memory: The frontal lobes and
autonoetic consciousness. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 331 354.
Internal references
Yael Shrager and Larry R. Squire (2008) Amnesia. Scholarpedia, 3(8):2789.
Valentino Braitenberg (2007) Brain. Scholarpedia, 2(11):2918.
William D. Penny and Karl J. Friston (2007) Functional imaging. Scholarpedia, 2(5):1478.
Howard Eichenbaum (2008) Memory. Scholarpedia, 3(3):1747.
Norman M. White (2007) Multiple memory systems. Scholarpedia, 2(7):2663.

Dere, E., Easton, A., Nadel, L., & Huston, J. P. (2008). Handbook of episodic memory. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Amnesia, Memory

Endel Tulving, Karl K. Szpunar (2009) Episodic memory. Scholarpedia, 4(8):3332, (go to the first approved version)
Created: 11 March 2007, reviewed: 25 August 2009, accepted: 25 August 2009
Invited by: Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia
Action editor: Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia
Reviewer B: Dr. Lars Nyberg, Umea University
Retrieved from "http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Episodic_memory"
Categories: Scholarpedia | Memory

This page was last modified 05:26, 24 January 2010.

Copyright (C)
ISSN 1941-6016
Served in 0.177 sec.