A cortical-hippocampal system for declarative memory

Recent neurobiological studies have begun to reveal the cognitive and neura l coding mechanisms that underlie declarative memory - our ability to recol lect everyday events and factual knowledge. These studies indicate that the critical circuitry involves bidirectional connections between the neocorte x, the parahippocampal region and the hippocampus. Each of these areas make s a unique contribution to memory processing. Widespread high-order neocort ical areas provide dedicated processors for perceptual, motor or cognitive information that is influenced by other components of the system. The parah ippocampal region mediates convergence of this information and extends the persistence of neocortical memory representations. The hippocampus encodes the sequences of places and events that compose episodic memories, and link s them together through their common elements. Here describe how these mech anisms work together to create and re-create fully networked representation s of previous experiences and knowledge about the world.