Encoding New Episodes and Making Them Stick

How do we encode, store, and retrieve new episodic memories, and what are the computations performed by the hippocampus during this process? One system that has been used to model the brain basis of episodic memory in humans is the study of spatial navigation by path integration in rodents. Here I discuss three exciting new findings focused on encoding or replay of spatial sequences in the rat hippocampus. These findings not only provide important new insight into the computations associated with encoding and consolidation of spatial trajectories, but may also have implications for understanding key aspects of human episodic memory.

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