Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a paired structure in the medial temporal lobe that helps form and organize new memories. It also contributes to spatial navigation.

Entorhinal cortex: A cortical region that provides a major interface between the hippocampus and other brain areas. It carries much of the cortical information that enters hippocampal circuits.
Medial temporal lobe: A region of the cerebral hemispheres containing structures involved in memory, including the hippocampus. The hippocampus is one part of this broader memory-related region.
Patient H.M.: Henry Molaison, whose medial temporal lobe surgery caused profound difficulty forming new lasting memories. His case established that medial temporal structures are essential for forming many new memories.
Amygdala: A set of nuclei in the medial temporal lobe involved in emotion, threat learning, and emotional memory. It can strengthen emotional learning, while the hippocampus supports contextual and event memory.
Dentate gyrus: The hippocampal subregion that receives major input from the entorhinal cortex and helps distinguish similar experiences. Its sparse coding helps separate overlapping memory traces before they enter the hippocampal circuit.
Episodic memory: Memory for personally experienced events situated in time and place. Forming new episodic memories is among the hippocampus’s best-established functions.
Scoville–Milner study: The 1957 report linking bilateral medial temporal lobe surgery to severe memory impairment in H.M. It documented the memory consequences that made hippocampal research central to neuroscience.
Basal ganglia: A group of subcortical nuclei involved in movement, action selection, and habit learning. Habit learning relies more on basal ganglia circuits than on hippocampal event-memory circuits.
CA3: A hippocampal subfield with recurrent connections thought to support associative memory and pattern completion. Its recurrent network can help retrieve a complete memory from partial cues.
Declarative memory: Memory for facts and events that can be consciously recalled and described. The hippocampus supports new declarative memories, especially their initial formation.

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