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Learning and memory

The behavioural essence of episodic memory

Nature Reviews Psychology (2025)Cite this article

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You can probably remember what you ate for breakfast this morning, picturing it in your mind’s eye. But it is less clear whether your pets or wild birds can remember their past experiences. As an undergraduate student, I became interested in episodic memory: memories for unique events that are recollected with a sense of re-experiencing. In particular, I asked myself whether my dogs (Rosie and Mia) had episodic memory. Perhaps Rosie and Mia could remember that they ate my mail one morning (including another letter about my student loans).

For Clayton and Dickinson, the question of whether non-human animals could remember episodes arose while studying how birds hide and store food for later use, known as food-caching behaviour. However, the first puzzle was to determine what episodic memory might be like for non-human animals.

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References

Original article

  • Clayton, N. S. & Dickinson, A. Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays. Nature 395, 272–274 (1998)

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  1. Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée (INMED)/INSERM U1249, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

    Tyler Wayne Ross

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  1. Tyler Wayne Ross
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Correspondence to Tyler Wayne Ross.

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Ross, T.W. The behavioural essence of episodic memory. Nat Rev Psychol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00501-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00501-6

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