The Roles of Hippocampal Subfields in Processing Spatial Contexts of Events: Neurophysiological and Behavioral Analyses

This chapter seeks to establish the link, based on experimental evidence, between some of the key computational principles of the hippocampal subfields and their cognitive functions for episodic event memory. It is shown that the firing patterns of hippocampal neurons are influenced not only by the external stimuli composed of spatial cues and their topological relationships but also by internal variables that influence the animal's behavior in space. In a goal-oriented, complex memory task, the internal context may encompass other variables, such as emotional variables and task demands, than simply idiothetic sensory cues (e.g., vestibular and proprioceptive inputs).