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The patient had severe amnesia after the procedure as well as an inability to form new memories
of events such as when or where a situation occurred (termed episodic memory). The only memories he
did retain were those from many years earlier, as far back as childhood.
Experts generally agree that the hippocampus plays a role in the formation of new memories
and in the detection of new surroundings, occurrences and stimuli. Some also believe the organ is
involved in declarative memory; that is memories that can be stated verbally such as facts and figures.
However, studies have shown that damage to the hippocampus does not affect a person's ability to learn
a new skill such as playing a musical instrument or solving certain types of puzzles which suggests that
the memories involved in learning a procedure are governed by brain areas other than the hippocampus.
Spatial navigation and spatial memory
Neuroscientist John O' Keefe and psychology professor Lynn Nadel studied the involvement of
the hippocampus in memory formation and learning behaviors in the 1960's and 1970's. Together, they
wrote the landmark 1978 book "The Hippocampus as a Cognitive map," which outlines the role of the
hippocampus in learning and storing information referring to portions of space, in the form of cognitive
maps.
Behavioural inhibition
Animal experiments investigating the effects of hippocampal damage have previously suggested
that, firstly, the damage causes hyperactivity and, secondly, that it affects the ability to inhibit
responses that have previously been learnt.

Synaptic Plasticity
Historically, it was generally thought that the role of the synapse was to simply transfer
information between one neuron and another neuron or between a neuron and a muscle cell. In
addition, it was thought that these connections, once established during development, were relatively
fixed in their strength, much like a solder joint between two electronic components. One exciting
development in neurobiology over the past forty years is the realization that most synapses are
extremely plastic; they are able to change their strength as a result of either their own activity or
through activity in another pathway. Many think that this synaptic plasticity is central to understanding
the mechanisms of learning and memory.
There are two general forms of synaptic plasticity, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic mechanisms,
also known as homosynaptic mechanisms, refer to changes in the strength of a synapse that are brought
about by its own activity. (Homo from the Greek meaning the same.) Extrinsic plasticity, or
heterosynaptic plasticity, is a change in the strength of a synapse brought about by activity in another
pathway. Abstract models of synaptic plasticity demonstrate how the concept of synaptic plasticity can
contribute to different forms of learning, memory and development and how this might contribute to
machine learning. Biophysical models of synaptic plasticity are based on actual cellular and molecular
mechanisms observed in neurons and demonstrate how synaptic plasticity can arise from real biological
mechanisms.
Hebbian theory
It is a theory in neuroscience that proposes an explanation for the adaptation of neurons in the
brain during the learning process. It describes a basic mechanism for synaptic plasticity, where an
increase in synaptic efficacy arises from the presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of the
postsynaptic cell. Introduced by Donald Hebb in his 1949 book The Organization of Behavior, the
theory is also called Hebb's rule, Hebb's postulate, and cell assembly theory. Hebb states it as
follows:

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“Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or "trace") tends to
induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability.… When an axon of cell A is near enough to
excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic
change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is
increased.”
The theory is often summarized as "cells that fire together, wire together", althoughthis is an
oversimplification of the nervous system not to be taken literally, as well asnot accurately representing
Hebb's original statement on cell connectivity strengthchanges. The theory is commonly evoked to
explain some types of associativelearning in which simultaneous activation of cells leads to pronounced
increases insynaptic strength. Such learning is known as Hebbian learning.

Hebbian engrams and cell assembly theory

Hebbian theory concerns how neurons might connect themselves to becomeengrams. Hebb's
theories on the form and function of cell assemblies can beunderstood from the following:
"The general idea is an old one, that any two cells or systems of cells that arerepeatedly active at
the same time will tend to become 'associated', so that activity inone facilitates activity in the
other.""When one cell repeatedly assists in firing another, the axon of the first cell developssynaptic
knobs .
Gordon Allport posits additional ideas regarding cell assembly theory and its role informing engrams,
along the lines of the concept of auto-association, described asfollows:

"If the inputs to a system cause the same pattern of activity to occur repeatedly, theseset of
active elements constituting that pattern will become increasingly strongly interassociated. That is,
each element will tend to turn on every other element and (with negative weights) to turn off the
elements that do not form the part of the pattern. To put it another way, the pattern as a whole will
become ‘auto associated’ we may called a learned (auto associated) pattern an engram.

Hebbian theory has been the primary basis for the conventional view that whenanalysed from a
holistic level, engrams are neuronal nets or neural networks.Work in the laboratory of Eric Kandel has
provided evidence for the involvement ofHebbian learning mechanisms at synapses in the marine
gastropod Aplysiacalifornica.

Experiments on Hebbian synapse modification mechanisms at the central nervous system

synapses of vertebrates are much more difficult to control than are experiments with the relatively
simple peripheral nervous system synapses studied in marine invertebrates. Much of the work on long-
lasting synaptic changes between vertebrate neurons (such as long-term potentiation) involves the use
of non-physiological experimental stimulation of brain cells. However, some of the physiologically
relevant synapse modification mechanisms that have been studied in vertebrate brains do seem to be
examples of Hebbian processes. One such studyreviews results from experiments that indicate that
long-lasting changes in synaptic strengths can be induced by physiologically relevant synaptic activity
working through both Hebbian and non-Hebbian mechanisms.

MEMORY CONSOLIDATION

Memory consolidation refers to the processby which a temporary, labile memory istransformed
into a more stable, long-lastingform. Memory consolidation was first proposedin 1900 (Muller and

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