ArticleNature neuroscience2016
Infantile amnesia reflects a developmental critical period for hippocampal learning.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 93 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
93 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Agreement Between Prospective and Retrospective Measures of Childhood Maltreatment: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA psychiatry · 2019Pooled it
- Retrosplenial cortex maturation aligns with the transition from infant forgetting to persistent memory.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Peptide signaling in the paraventricular thalamus contributes to disrupted adult reward behaviors after early-life adversity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Orchestrated molecular changes of proliferative, migratory-fibrillar, synaptic, and postmigratory compartments align with precocious cortex-type specification in the early human pallium.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Experience-dependent critical period for synaptic plasticity in the rat olfactory amygdala.Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience · 2026Review
- Microglial activity during postnatal development is required for infantile amnesia in mice.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Infant long-term memory: The last quarter century and the next.Infant behavior & development · 2025Review
- Critical Periods and Beyond: Dynamic Functions of Perineuronal Nets in Cognition, Development, and Disease.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Adolescent nutritional influences on the brain: implications for eating behaviors.Neuropharmacology · 2025Review
- Microglial plasticity across development mediates infantile amnesia.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Long-Term Memory Engrams From Development to Adulthood.Hippocampus · 2025Review
- A sensitive period for the development of episodic-like memory in mice.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Developmental changes in brain-wide fear memory networks.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2025Article
- Article
- The Implementation of Infant Anoesis and Adult Autonoesis in the Retrogenesis and Staging System of the Neurocognitive Disorders: A Proposal for a Multidimensional Person-Centered Model.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Alisol A ameliorates vascular cognitive impairment via AMPK/NAMPT/SIRT1-mediated regulation of cholesterol and autophagy.Theranostics · 2025Article
- Research Review: Why do prospective and retrospective measures of maltreatment differ? A narrative review.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Review
- Early and late place cells during postnatal development of the hippocampus.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Overexpression of α-Klotho isoforms promotes distinct Effects on BDNF-Induced Alterations in Dendritic Morphology.Molecular neurobiology · 2024Article
- Neonatal hypoxia-ischemia alters the events governing the hippocampal critical period of postnatal synaptic plasticity leading to deficits in working memory in mice.Neurobiology of disease · 2024Article
33 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Episodic memories formed during the first postnatal period are rapidly forgotten, a phenomenon known as 'infantile amnesia'. In spite of this memory loss, early experiences influence adult behavior, raising the question of which mechanisms underlie infantile memories and amnesia. Here we show that in rats an experience learned during the infantile amnesia period is stored as a latent memory trace for a long time; indeed, a later reminder reinstates a robust, context-specific and long-lasting memory. The formation and storage of this latent memory requires the hippocampus, follows a sharp temporal boundary and occurs through mechanisms typical of developmental critical periods, including the expression switch of the NMDA receptor subunits from 2B to 2A, which is dependent on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5). Activating BDNF or mGluR5 after training rescues the infantile amnesia. Thus, early episodic memories are not lost but remain stored long term. These data suggest that the hippocampus undergoes a developmental critical period to become functionally competent.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.