The hippocampus is one of the brain's great mysteries. Historically, theories of its function included emotion, response inhibition, general memory and spatial perception/learning, with memory versus space emerging as a particular focus of more recent debates. A 1978 paper by Olton and colleagues captured this dichotomy by exploiting their newly developed radial maze task to reveal a profound deficit in the ability of hippocampally lesioned rats to execute a spatial memory task. This finding supported the emerging spatial map theory of hippocampal function, and helped pave the way for the subsequent uncovering of an entire brain system linking space and memory.

中文翻译：

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海马体：从记忆到地图，再到记忆地图

海马体是大脑的一大奥秘。从历史上看，其功能理论包括情绪、反应抑制、一般记忆和空间感知/学习，其中记忆与空间成为最近辩论的一个特别焦点。Olton 及其同事在 1978 年的一篇论文通过利用他们新开发的径向迷宫任务来揭示海马损伤大鼠执行空间记忆任务的能力存在严重缺陷，从而捕捉到了这种二分法。这一发现支持了新兴的海马功能空间图理论，并为随后揭示连接空间和记忆的整个大脑系统铺平了道路。