The intricacies of the many brain areas and structures involved, complicated further by the interrelationships of the many types of memory, make this topic one in which a great deal of painstaking research is necessary. Yet to ignore the evidence at hand would simply be foolhardy, and it seems increasingly likely that autobiographical and episodic memory should be considered two different mental phenomena. References

Baddeley, A.; Aggelton, J.; Conway, M. (eds). (2002). Episodic Memory: New Directions in Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gilboa, A. (2004). "Autobiographical and episodic memory -- one and the same? Evidence from prefrontal activation in neuroimaging studies." Neuropsychologia, 42, pp. 1336-49.

Mayes, A.; Rpberts, N. (2001). "Theories of Episodic Memory."

Schagman,...

(2008). "Involuntary autobiographical memories in and outside the laboratory: How different are they from voluntary autobiographical memories?" Memory & Cognition, 36(5), pp. 920-32.
Summerfield, J.; Hassabis, D.; Maguire, E. (2009). "Cortical midline involvement in autobiographical memory." NeuroImage, 44(3), pp. 1188-200.

Svoboda, E.; Levine, B. (2009). "The Effects of Rehearsal on the Functional Neuroanatomy of Episodic Autobiographical and Semantic Remembering: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study." Journal of Neuroscience, 29(10), pp. 3073-82.

Thaiss, L.; Petrides, M. (2008). "Autobiographical memory of the recent past following frontal cortex or temporal lobe excisions." European Journal of Neuroscience, 28(4), pp. 829-40.

Tulving, E.;…