Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

The human hippocampus: cognitive maps or relational memory?

Dharshan Kumaran1, Eleanor A Maguire

  • 1Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom. d.kumaran@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|August 5, 2005
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

CA2/3-dependent stability of frontal mnemonic representations predict episodic deficits in human amnesia.

Cell reports·2025
Same author

Anatomically Veridical On-Scalp Sensor Topographies.

The European journal of neuroscience·2025
Same author

Language models, like humans, show content effects on reasoning tasks.

PNAS nexus·2024
Same author

Automated protocols for delineating human hippocampal subfields from 3 Tesla and 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging data.

Hippocampus·2024
Same author

Release of cognitive and multimodal MRI data including real-world tasks and hippocampal subfield segmentations.

Scientific data·2023
Same author

Mitigating susceptibility-induced distortions in high-resolution 3DEPI fMRI at 7T.

NeuroImage·2023
Same journal

Vestibular function drives gaze stability in locomoting macaques.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Region- and layer-specific glutamatergic synapse development in the nascent cortical hierarchy.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Endogenous peptide derived from c-Cbl-associated protein counteracts its inhibitory effect on enteric neural crest cell colonization in Hirschsprung disease.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Drowsiness alters the neural dynamics but not the core computations of multisensory integration.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same journal

A Matter of Parameters: Tailored Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Enhances Cortico-Thalamo-Cortical Circuit Resonance.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Proactive visual and motor prioritization differentially scale with cue reliability.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
See all related articles

The human hippocampus shows a bias for spatial relationships, supporting the cognitive map theory over relational theory. This research clarifies the hippocampus's role in memory and social network processing.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • The hippocampus is crucial for memory, with two main theories explaining its function: cognitive map theory (spatial processing) and relational theory (amodal processing).
  • Understanding the hippocampus's precise role in memory and navigation is essential for neuroscience and psychology.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To differentiate between the cognitive map theory and relational theory regarding hippocampal function.
  • To investigate whether the hippocampus processes spatial relationships specifically or more general relational information.

Main Methods:

  • A novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm was developed to compare spatial and non-spatial (social) relational processing.
  • Participants navigated optimal routes in a virtual city (spatial) and between social connections (non-spatial).

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Distinct brain networks were activated for spatial and social relational tasks.
  • Hippocampal activation was significantly greater during spatial relational processing compared to social relational processing.

Conclusions:

  • The findings support the cognitive map theory, indicating a bias for spatial relationship processing in the human hippocampus.
  • This research advances the understanding of the hippocampus's contribution to memory and neural instantiation of social networks.