Lifelines - Markus Werkle-Bergner

The development of memory across childhood is a central theme in developmental cognitive neuroscience, linking maturational changes in neural architecture to the emergence of increasingly flexible cognitive abilities. A core challenge of adaptive memory formation lies in balancing two competing demands: extracting regularities across experiences to enable generalization and inference, while preserving distinct representations to maintain memory specificity. In childhood, this tension is particularly pronounced due to the asynchronous development of generalization and specificity. Yet, it remains poorly understood how children achieve a consolidation of both forms of memory. Computational models suggest that individual experiences are first encoded as hippocampus-dependent episodic traces, which only gradually become integrated into more generalized representations through consolidation processes—often facilitated by post-learning sleep.
In this talk, I will present new insights into the neural and cognitive foundations of memory development. Drawing on examples from ongoing work in our group, I will highlight current research trends that integrate computational accounts with behavioral, electrophysiological, and structural imaging data. Together, these studies aim to advance a mechanistic framework for understanding how adaptive memory functions emerge and transform across childhood.