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Despite considerable information gained on the capacity of newborns to learn and remember under a variety of conditions, little is known on the neural basis of memory processes in early infancy. This paper review recent studies in non-human primates demonstrating that memory comprises multiple systems that are subserved by different neural systems developing at different time points in early infancy. Thus, the procedural memory system mediated by the striatum and cerebellum is present at birth and reaches functional maturity in the first postnatal months. By contract, the declarative memory system mediated by the hippocampal formation and the working memory system mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have a more protracted development, reaching functional maturity around one year of age for the former and three years of age for the later. Given the many similarities in the developmental time course of memory processes and neural systems in humans and monkeys, the experimental findings have important implication for our understanding of the development of memory functions and their neural substrates in humans.