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A unique role for the hippocampus in recollecting the past and remembering the future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2007

Valerie A. Carr
Affiliation:
Interdepartmental Program in Neuroscience, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1563valeriec@ucla.edu
Indre V. Viskontas
Affiliation:
Memory & Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143. iviskontas@memory.ucsf.edu

Abstract

Suddendorf & Corballis (S&C) argue that episodic memory is the most flexible and recently evolved memory system, and point to the reorganization of prefrontal cortex throughout human evolution as the neuroanatomical substrate. Their approach, however, fails to address the unique role that the hippocampus, a primitive brain region, plays in creating and recalling episodic memories, as well as future event construction.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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