The avian hippocampal formation (HF) is thought to regulate map-like memory representations of visual landmarks/landscape features and has more recently been suggested to be similarly important for the perceptual integration of landmarks/landscapes. Aspects of spatial memory and perception likely combine to support the now well-documented ability of homing pigeons to learn to retrace the same route when homing from familiar locations, leading to the prediction that damage to the HF would result in a diminished ability to repeatedly fly a similar route home. HF-lesioned homing pigeons were repeatedly released from three sites to assess the importance of the hippocampus as pigeons gradually learn a familiar route home guided by familiar landmark and landscape features. As expected, control pigeons displayed increasing fidelity to a familiar route home, and by inference, successful perceptual and memory processing of familiar landmarks/landscape features. By contrast, the impoverished route fidelity of the HF-lesioned pigeons indicated an impaired sensitivity to the same landmark/landscape features.

禽海马区形成（HF）被认为可以调节视觉地标/景观特征的地图样记忆表示，并且最近被建议对于地标/景观的感知整合同样重要。空间记忆和知觉的各个方面可能结合在一起，以支持现在有据可查的归巢鸽子在从熟悉的位置归巢时学会回溯同一条路线的能力，从而导致对HF的损害将导致其反复飞行能力下降的预测。类似的回家路线。随着鸽子逐渐学习以熟悉的地标和景观特征为指导的熟悉的归巢路线，从三个地点反复释放了HF损伤的归巢鸽子，以评估海马的重要性。不出所料 对照鸽表现出对熟悉的回家路线的保真度不断提高，并通过推理成功地对熟悉的地标/景观特征进行了感知和记忆处理。相比之下，受HF影响的鸽子的路线保真度较差，表明它们对相同地标/风景特征的敏感性降低。