Hippocampus 🧠
The hippocampus is where memories colored by associated emotions are consolidated from short-term to long-term memory. It also deals with spacial memory for navigation. The amygdala and hippocampus are supposed to check and balance and exert feedback on each other. When all is working well, acute stress is transduced into memories by the hippocampus so that you don’t put yourself in the same situation again.
The hippocampus doesn’t do much without oversight from the prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus is something like the cartographer, receiving new input from working memory, cross-referencing that information with existing memories for the sake of comparison and to form new associations, and then reporting back to the prefrontal cortex. A memory, scientists believe, is a collection of information fragments dispersed throughout the brain. The hippocampus serves as a way station, receiving the fragments from the cortex, and then bundling them together and sending them back up as a map of a unique new pattern of synaptic connections.
Brain scans show that when we learn a new word, for example, the prefrontal cortex lights up with activity. Once the new circuit has been established by the firing of glutamate, and the word is learned, the prefrontal cortex goes dark. It has overseen the initial stages of the project, and now it can pass responsibility to the hippocampus while it moves on to new challenges.
References
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Lustig, H., Robert. (2017). The Hacking of the American Mind Chapter 4. Killing Jiminy Stress, Fear, and Cortisol (Location 855). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
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Haley, J., John. Hagerman, Eric. (2008). Spark Chapter 2. Learning (p. 50). New York, NY: Little Brown Spark.
Metadata
Type:🔵 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Anatomy / Neuroanatomy Status:☀️