ABSTRACT

Episodic memory retrieval allows one to travel back in time and re-experience events that happened minutes ago or decades ago. What structures of the brain mediate this remarkable ability? Until recently, the chief method for answering this question was to observe how well brain-damaged patients remember past events. Despite the enormous contributions of this method, it has several limitations, including difficulties differentiating between learning and retrieval deficits, localizing critical lesions, and generalizing to normal brain function. Currently, these problems are being addressed by functional neuroimaging techniques, such as event-related potentials (ERPs), positron emission tomography (PET), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). PET and fMRI can tell us what regions of the brain are active when we remember a past event, and ERPs can tell us exactly when they are active. In this chapter, I review some of the basic findings regarding the neural basis of episodic retrieval provided by these techniques and describe some important challenges in this new and exciting area.