Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Dept. of Psychology & Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, UK.
Professor, Department of Psychology and Center for Neuroscience, University of California at Davis, USA
Re-contextualizing the hippocampus
The hippocampus is one of the most extensively studied areas of the brain, and it is at the center of numerous theories of the neural basis of human memory, but its role in memory is highly controversial. I will present data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, along with preliminary intracranial EEG evidence suggesting that, rather than coding for all attributes of memories, the hippocampus more specifically links incoming information with a representation of the temporal context of an event. Additionally, I will present evidence for the idea that different hippocampal subregions interact with two functionally and anatomically dissociable cortical systems that extend beyond the medial temporal lobes. The results are inconsistent with the idea that the hippocampus is at the apex of a specialized general memory system, and more consistent with the idea that the hippocampal context representations modulate activity in distinct systems that guide different aspects of behavior.
