FUNCTIONAL-ORGANIZATION OF THE HIPPOCAMPAL MEMORY SYSTEM

In humans declarative or explicit memory is supported by the hippocamp us and related structures of the medial temporal lobe working in conce rt with the cerebral cortex, This paper reviews our progress in develo ping an animal model for studies of cortical-hippocampal interactions in memory processing, Our findings support the view that the cortex ma intains various forms of memory representation and that hippocampal st ructures extend the persistence and mediate the organization of these codings, Specifically, the parahippocampal region, through direct and reciprocal interconnections with the cortex, is sufficient to support the convergence and extended persistence of cortical codings, The hipp ocampus itself is critical to the organization cortical representation s in terms of relationships among items in memory and in the flexible memory expression that is the hallmark of declarative memory.