Abstract
Black Nadel, and O’Keefe (1977) have proposed that the main function of the hippocampus in behavior is to engage in spatial mapping, i.e., to provide the cognitive maps which form the basis of place strategies. They review evidence that such strategies play a role in certain avoidance and punishment situations and that hippocampal damage affects these strategies while leaving unaffected cue strategies derived from temporal processing. The evidence supporting the spatial mapping hypothesis is examined in terms of an alternative notion, namely, that the hippocampus enables the animal to ignore (tune out) irrelevant stimuli and events. Despite the limitations of such ad hoc analyses, a case is made that deficits in spatial learning might ultimately be traced to (a) persistence of inefficient modes of responding under the control of irrelevant stimuli and (b) failures of associative learning due to interference from irrelevant incongruous events. It is suggested that the hippocampus is part of a general system that processes information in both space and time.
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