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Learning and memory

The human hippocampus beyond episodic memory

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 25, page 211 (2024)Cite this article

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In the 1950s, Brenda Milner’s extensive research on patient H.M. revealed that surgical bilateral resection of the hippocampus (carried out with the aim of alleviating his refractory epilepsy) had profoundly affected his ability to encode new episodic memories, but spared his capacity to learn and retain new information from motor tasks. This groundbreaking work introduced the concept of specialized memory systems and challenged the established paradigm of equipotentiality, in which memory function was thought to be distributed throughout the brain.

In addition to its invaluable contribution to the development of the field of cognitive neuroscience, Milner’s work inevitably introduced a dichotomy, in which declarative memory (episodic and semantic) was viewed as hippocampus-dependent and non-declarative memory (procedural motor and perceptual) as hippocampus-independent. This led the field of memory research to become fragmented, and for many years the study of the neural mechanisms that support declarative and procedural memories progressed along parallel lanes. However, more recent evidence — including a study from Dӧhring et al. published in 2017 — has prompted a reevaluation of this dichotomy by revealing roles for the human hippocampus that go beyond episodic memory.

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References

Original article

  • Döhring, J. et al. Motor skill learning and offline-changes in TGA patients with acute hippocampal CA1 lesions. Cortex 89, 156–168 (2017)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IFIBIO Houssay, CONICET, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Valeria Della-Maggiore

  2. School of Science and Technology (ECyT), National University of San Martin (UNSAM), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Valeria Della-Maggiore

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  1. Valeria Della-Maggiore
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Correspondence to Valeria Della-Maggiore.

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Della-Maggiore, V. The human hippocampus beyond episodic memory. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 25, 211 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-024-00798-x

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