Evidence of hippocampal learning in human infants

Abstract

The hippocampus is essential for human memory.¹ The protracted maturation of memory capacities from infancy through early childhood^2-4 is thus often attributed to hippocampal immaturity.^5-7 The hippocampus of human infants has been characterized in terms of anatomy,^8,9 but its function has never been tested directly because of technical challenges.^10,11 Here, we use recently developed methods for task-based fMRI in awake human infants¹² to test the hypothesis that the infant hippocampus supports statistical learning.^13-15 Hippocampal activity increased with exposure to visual sequences of objects when the temporal order contained regularities to be learned, compared to when the order was random. Despite the hippocampus doubling in anatomical volume across infancy, learning-related functional activity bore no relationship to age. This suggests that the hippocampus is recruited for statistical learning at the youngest ages in our sample, around 3 months. Within the hippocampus, statistical learning was clearer in anterior than posterior divisions. This is consistent with the theory that statistical learning occurs in the monosynaptic pathway,¹⁶ which is more strongly represented in the anterior hippocampus.^17,18 The monosynaptic pathway develops earlier than the trisynaptic pathway, which is linked to episodic memory,^19,20 raising the possibility that the infant hippocampus participates in statistical learning before it forms durable memories. Beyond the hippocampus, the medial prefrontal cortex showed statistical learning, consistent with its role in adult memory integration²¹ and generalization.²² These results suggest that the hippocampus supports the vital ability of infants to extract the structure of their environment through experience.

Keywords: complementary learning systems; episodic memory; generalization; infant cognition; infantile amnesia; medial temporal lobe; memory development; schemas; statistical learning; task-based fMRI.