The hippocampus has been implicated generally in the processing of information both spatial and nonspatial. Cells associated with LTP are particularly numerous in the hippocampus, which is assumed to be crucially involved in learning and memory, provides some encouragement for or believing that this may indeed be a basic learning mechanism. In a classic book published in 1949 the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb speculated that a mechanism such as this might underlie the process of learning. Since that time a number of computer-based learning models have been developed using Hebb's ideas.
The discovery of H.M.'s impairment attracted attention to the hippocampus as a possible substrate for learning and memory, and led to the generation of a number of animal models of hippocampal function. Based in large part on data used to support such models, processes presumed to rely on the hippocampus have included declarative memory, working memory, temporary memory, and configural learning (Sutherland & Rudy, 1989). Each of these processes has been described as necessary for the solution of a variety of learning tasks. Investigations of these potential functions of hippocampus in the utilization of both spatial and nonspatial information continue to rely primarily on assessment of acquisition or retention of discrimination learning by rats following experimentally induced damage to the hippocampus. Unfortunately, interpretation of the evidence obtained within these types of studies has been complicated by two major problems.
Functional imaging techniques have been applied to the study of long-term as well as working memory, although the results are so far rather less consistent, both across studies, and between scanning studies and earlier data from lesions. As, there is no doubt that the regions within the frontal rontal lobes are involved in both the encoding and retrieval phases of episodic memory, although the link with prior lesion studies remains problematic..................
