Abstract
Here we review our development of an animal model of episodic memory and amnesia that employs a signal detection analyses to characterize recognition memory performance in rats. This approach aims to distinguish episodic recollection of studied items from mere familiarity for recently experienced stimuli, and then to examine the neural basis of these memory processes. Our findings on intact animals indicate that it is possible to distinguish independent components of recognition that are associated with features of recollection and familiarity in humans. Furthermore, we have found that damage limited to the hippocampus results in a selective deficit in recollection and not familiarity. Also, aging and prefrontal damage result in a similar pattern of impaired recollection and spared familiarity. However, whereas the recollection deficit following hippocampal damage can be attributed to the forgetting of studied materials, the impairment following prefrontal damage is due to false alarms, likely reflecting a deficit in source monitoring.