Neocortical Memory Circuits

For many decades, the hippocampus and associated limbic areas of the mammalian central nervous system have been the structures most closely associated with memory (Scoville and Miner 1957; Mishkin 1982; Amaral et al. 1987). Indeed, the hippocampus is essential for acquiring and consolidating new knowledge about events, people, and places. In the unusual circumstance that both medial temporal lobes are damaged, as in the famous case of H.M., memory is reduced to that acquired before the injury (Scoville and Milner 1957); after suffering this type of injury, an individual is unable to remember most events for even a few minutes.