The sea horse comes of age: theoretical comment on Rehbein, Killiany, and Mahut (2005) and Killiany, Rehbein, and Mahut (2005).
Impairments in various aspects of learning and memory have been ascribed to the effects of damage to the hippocampal formation in adult nonhuman primates. Whether these effects reflect disturbance of a unitary process or multiple processes within the hippocampus and whether other systems may participate in these functions is unclear. After making hippocampal ablations in infant rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), L. Rehbein, R. Killiany, and H. Mahut (2005) and R. Killiany, L. Rehbein, and H. Mahut (2005) reported a dissociation of effect between tasks of recognition memory and contextual retrieval (impaired) and associative learning (spared). The findings point to an ontogenetic dissociation of function within the hippocampal formation and, at the same time, support the view of the coexistence of at least two neural systems that underlie memory and learning.
Moss
Mark B
MB
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02215, USA. mmoss@cajal-1.bu.edu
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001927:Brain Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*