Hippocampus - replies to a question
kenneth paul collins
KPCollins at postoffice.worldnet.att.net
Fri Nov 8 18:47:10 EST 1996
First things first. Give your father a hug for me. His work gave me an early
toe-hold on the things discussed below. Second, does your association admit
As for what you've posted with respect to the position James Woodson took, my
position "agrees" with that of Dr. Woodson - that the hippocampus functions as
an intermediate-level "supersystem configuration generator" which "holds" the
supersystem "stable" while consolidation occurs. The easiest window into this
is via behavior. Loss of the hippocampi only results in deficits with respect
to the formation of new memories post lesion. If the memories were actually
stored in the hippocampi, then all memory would be wiped out with destruction
of the hippocampi.
As is discussed in AoK, Ap5, the hippocampi are also strongly involved with
the "metering out" of "reward", which they do in inverse proportion to a
stimulus set's relative "familiarity" - in inverse proportion to the degree to
which memory of the stimulus set is "consolidated" - or, in terms of the work
I've done, in proportion to relatively-small TD E/I(up) - as the relatively-
small TD E/I(up) is "whittled" down to a TD E/I-minimized state, and in
proportion to such. Cheers, ken collins
James L. Olds wrote:
> If what you wrote below was entirely correct, then how would you explain
> the results that started to come out of Disterhoft's lab at NWU ten years
> ago (and have continued to be replicated in various ways right down to
> today) whereby hippocampi removed from the rabbit 24 hrs to subsequent to
> classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane reflex, show biophysical
> changes in K+ conductances within individual CA1 cells, that are
> learning-specific (ie, appear only in isolated hippocampi from conditioned
> rabbits, but not in the isolated hippocampi of control rabbits--both
> explicitly unpaired groups and naives). I tend to agree with you
> intellectually, but the empirical data out there needs to be delt with.
> Jim Olds Jr.
> James Woodson <jwoodson at ucla.edu> wrote in article
> The hippocampus is believed NOT to be a locus of memory storage.
> > Rather, it is currently thought to be a processing station or relay, and
> > therefore, may actually serve a lesser role in humans than in less
> > cortically dependent species.
People hate because they fear, and they fear because
they do not understand, and they do not understand
because hating is less work than understanding.
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