Placing hippocampal single-unit studies in a historical context

A profound increase in the study of the role of the hippocampus in behavior and cognitive processing resulted from the startling discovery by O'Keefe and Dostrovsky in 1971 that hippocampal neurons fire selectively in differe nt regions or "place fields" of an environment. That discovery spawned a co mprehensive theory of hippocampal function that was elucidated in the publi cation, The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map by O'Keefe and Nadel in 1978. Ac cording to the theory, the hippocampus serves as the neural substrate for m aps of allocentric space. The goal of this paper is to revisit the historic al background for the development of the cognitive map theory and to examin e the context in which the theory and the phenomenon of place field activit y began to gain acceptance by the scientific community. While subsequent re search has led some to question if the theory can adequately account for al l consequences of hippocampal lesions and all the correlates of hippocampal cellular activity, it is clear the theory has stood the test of time and h as been successful in generating an enormous amount of fruitful research. ( C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.