Autobiographical memory in children: relation to neural white matter

Abstract

Autobiographical memory involves the integration of self-referential memory into a coherent narrative of life experiences. Recently, several studies of healthy adults and older adults with neurodegenerative disorders have utilised diffusion imaging to construct a network of cortical regions that support autobiographical memory. We extend this work to an age range, 4 to 7 years, when autobiographical memory is still developing. We correlated the recall of autobiographical events with limbic white matter tracts that have been previously implicated in episodic and autobiographical recall, i.e., the uncinate fasciculus and cingulum bundle. While there was no evidence for a link between the uncinate and autobiographical memory, we found a strong association between cingulum microstructure (fractional anisotropy; FA) and the number of autobiographical details provided. No relation was found between limbic tract microstructure and other measures of episodic recall. These findings extend work in adult samples, suggesting that the cingulum bundle may contribute in a meaningful way to autobiographical memory across a wide age range.

Keywords: Memory; cingulum bundle; default mode network; development; diffusion imaging; white matter.