In this paper, we propose the Associative Latent DisentAnglement (ALDA) model, inspired by recent advances in computational neuroscience, to address the generalization problem of vision-based reinforcement learning agents to new environments. ALDA builds on standard off-policy reinforcement learning and combines latent disentanglement with an associative memory model to achieve zero-shot generalization to challenging task variations without relying on data augmentation. Furthermore, we formally demonstrate that data augmentation is a form of weak disentanglement and discuss its implications.