Mnemonic Contributions of

The role of the hippocampus in learning and memory processes has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the 1957 report (Scoville and Milner, 1957) of the remarkably severe amnesia in patient H.M., which resulted from the surgical removal of the hippocampal formation and a large amount of the adjacent tissue in the medial temporal lobes. Since then we have made great strides in documenting the hippocampal contribution to learning and memory, and we have generated a massive literature on the subject. As a result, there is virtually universal consensus that the hippocampus is involved in learning and memory. Nevertheless, many questions remain about the specific kinds of memory subserved by the hippocampus, the specific processes enabled by hippocampal neurocomputation, and the kinds of information encoded by hippocampal neurons. Accounts of the potentially unique contribution by hippocampus to learning include its role in spatial processing (e.g., O'Keefe and Nadel, 1978; Poucet