The place cells-cognitive map or memory system?

This chapter reviews attempts to determine how activity of neurons in the place system — place cells and the more recently discovered head direction and entorhinal grid cells — relates to what the animal “knows”, as manifest by how it behaves. Beginning with O'Keefe and Nadel's cognitive map hypothesis, the chapter explores the extent to which behavioral experiments have supported this idea, before turning to the question of how, if at all, these neurons contribute to episodic memory. It argues that while data suggesting a role for place cells in encoding transient events are scarce, data suggesting that cells may encode the spatial-contextual scaffolding for the attachment of episodic memory are plentiful and plausible