Historical Perspective: Proposed Functions, Biological Characteristics, and Neurobiological Models of the Hippocampus

This concepts of hippocampal neurobiology of the modern era up to about the 1970s. It is divided into two main sections. The first provides a selective overview of some of the historically important proposals concerning the function of the hippocampus. The second highlights the historically significant advances in neurobiology that have been made by using the unique structure of the hippocampus for studies ranging from defining the morphology of excitatory and inhibitory synapses to developing computational models of memory. This second section is itself divided into subsections that emphasize first the biological characteristics of the hippocampus and then the advantages of the hippocampus as a model system for neurobiological research.