Scene Complexity: Influence on Perception, Memory, and Development in the Medial Temporal Lobe

The developmental distinction between different aspects of recognition memory may refl ect two dissociable mnemonic processes; recollection , that includes specifi c knowledge of the details of the event, and familiarity, that may include less contextual details (Jacoby et al., 1993; Yonelinas, 1999). In a functional neuroimaging study of memory encoding for scenes in 8 to 24-year olds, development of successful memory encoding was associated with increased activation in PFC regions that were specifi cally associated with recollection (but not familiarity) for scenes (Ofen et al., 2007). In contrast, MTL regions were similarly activated across age. These fi ndings suggested that the protracted development of recollection relative to familiarity could refl ect protracted maturation of PFC relative to MTL functions supporting memory formation. The lack of developmental changes for activations in the MTL in our previous study suggested that memory processes served by MTL are mature by the age of 8 years. This conclusion, however, contradicts other evidence that implicates prolonged maturation of MTL subregions. First, memory for high-level visual stimuli such as natural scenes and faces grows from childhood through adolescence into young adulthood (Diamond and Carey, 1977; Mandler and Robinson, 1978), and this development of memory ability has been associated with the development of cortical areas that are specialized for visual perception of scenes and faces (Golarai et al., 2007). Specifi cally, functionally -defi ned scene-selective parahippocampal cortex known as the 'parahippocampal place area' or PPA (Epstein and Kanwisher, 1998) grows in size from childhood through adulthood, and this