June 3rd, 2022 – David Smith (Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA) – The Hippocampus and the Neural Basis of Context-Dependent Memory

The environmental context is known to plays a profound role in memory. The context is a potent retrieval cue that primes the memories that belong to that context. This is highly adaptive because it prevents interference from memories that belong to other contexts and provides a mechanism for flexible, situationally appropriate behavior. In this talk, I will discuss our work using a rodent olfactory memory model, which shows that hippocampal firing patterns encode the context and allow subjects to retrieve the correct memories while minimizing interference. This provides a neurophysiological account of context-dependent memory.