[3] One of the main components of episodic memory is the process of recollection, which elicits the retrieval of contextual information pertaining to a specific event or experience that has occurred.
[8] Some researchers believe that the prefrontal cortex helps organize information for more efficient storage, drawing upon its role in executive function.
Others believe that the prefrontal cortex underlies semantic strategies which enhance encoding, such as thinking about the meaning of the study material or rehearsing it in working memory.
[12] Endel Tulving originally described episodic memory as a record of a person's experience that held temporally dated information and spatio-temporal relations.
However, this theory was rejected when Howard and Kahana completed experiments on latent semantic analysis (LSA) that supported the opposite.
However, whether the vividness of the flashbulb memory is due to a virtual "flash" that occurs because of the emotional experience has been hotly contested.
Flashbulb memory is usually perceived as highly accurate and consistent over time and are presented with great confidence, even if sometimes they are inaccurate.
Authors Brown, Kulik, and Conway argued that these special memories involve the limbic system, specifically, the amygdala.
In healthy adults, longterm visual episodic memory can be enhanced specifically[20] through administration of the Acetylcholine esterase inhibitor Donepezil, whereas verbal episodic memory can be improved in persons with the val/val genotype of the val158met polymorphism through administration of the CNS penetrant specific catecholamine-O-methyltransferase inhibitor Tolcapone.
[21] Furthermore, episodic memory is enhanced through AZD3480, a selective agonist at the neuronal alpha4beta2 nicotinic receptor, which is developed by the company Targacept.
A recent placebo controlled study found that DHEA, which is a functional cortisol antagonist, improves episodic memory in healthy young men (Alhaj et al.
Demonstrating episodic memory in the absence of language, and thus in non-human animals, has been declared impossible as long as there are no agreed-upon non-linguistic behavioral indicators of conscious experience (Griffiths et al., 1999).
According to a study conducted by the University of Edinburgh (2006), hummingbirds were the first animal to demonstrate two of the aspects of episodic memory—the ability to recall where certain flowers were located and how recently they were visited.
Other studies have examined this type of memory in different animal species, such as dogs,[32][33] rats, honey bees, and primates.
The ability of animals to encode and retrieve past experiences relies on the circuitry of the medial temporal lobe, a structure including the hippocampus.
[34] Animal lesion studies have provided significant findings related to the importance of particular brain structures in episodic-like memory.
For example, hippocampal lesions have severely impacted all three components (what, where, and when) in animals, suggesting that the hippocampus is responsible for detecting novel events, stimuli, and places when forming new memories and retrieving that information later on.
Despite similar neural areas and evidence from experiments, some scholars remain cautious about comparisons to human episodic memory.
The problem may be better tractable by studying episodic memory's adaptive counterpart: the capacity to flexibly imagine future events.
However, a recent experiment addressed one of Suddendorf and Busby (2003)'s specific criticisms (the Bischof-Köhler hypothesis, which states that nonhuman animals can only take actions based on immediate needs, as opposed to future needs).