Congratulations Dr. Friend!

Congratulations to Owen Friend for officially defending his dissertation and earning his Ph.D.!

In just four years, Owen completed seven studies (three behavioral, four neuroimaging) examining how children learn to remember when events happen. His work shows that development is not just about getting more precise—it reflects a fundamental shift in how memories are structured and used.

Across studies, he found that younger children rely more on memory for individual events, while older participants increasingly use structured knowledge about temporal patterns to make inferences and organize experience. These changes are supported by the maturation of hippocampal and frontoparietal systems, which enable the brain to integrate information across time and build more flexible, relational representations.

His work also bridges tightly controlled lab tasks with real-world behavior, showing how these mechanisms support everything from inferring when something happened to organizing autobiographical memories of everyday life.

We’re incredibly proud of Owen, not only for an outstanding dissertation (his committee called it one of the best defenses they’ve seen), but for the depth, rigor, and creativity he brought to every part of this work.

Congratulations, Dr. Friend!