Over the past 60 years the neural correlates of human episodic memory have been the focus of intense neuroscientific scrutiny. By contrast, neuroscience has paid substantially less attention
to understanding the emergence of this neurocognitive system. In this review we consider
how the study of memory development has evolved. In doing so, we concentrateprimarily on the
first postnatal year because it is within this time window that the most dramatic shifts in scientific
opinion have occurred. Moreover, this time frame includes the critical age (∼9 months) at which human infants purportedly first begin to emonstrate rudimentary hippocampal-dependent
memory. We review the evidence for and against thisassertion, note the lack of direct eurocognitive
data speaking to this issue, and question how demonstrations of exuberant relational learning and
memory in infants as young as3-months old can be accommodated within extant models. Finally,
we discuss whe ther current impasses in the infant memory literature could be leveraged by making greater use of neuroimaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which have been