We have a remarkable ability to think flexibly and update our autobiographies as we amass experiences from childhood through adulthood. However, working and episodic memory, the systems responsible for these feats, change during development and become disrupted with disease. In this talk, Johnson will present evidence from both invasive and noninvasive neural recordings that elucidate memory formation in humans. First, she will challenge the long-prevailing model that prefrontal cortex alone drives working memory. Second, she will describe the first studies of memory development using intracranial EEG recordings in children. Third, she will propose a three-pronged approach to uncovering the neural codes underlying memory throughout the lifespan: (1) track memory formation, maintenance, and retrieval in real time; (2) model lifespan individual differences; and (3) examine causality of structure and function. Paired with advanced computational analyses, the combined use of invasive and noninvasive recordings and electrical stimulation techniques will progress the field forward from describing correlates toward deducing mechanistic explanations of the neural basis of behavior.