The Hippocampus as Episodic Encoder: Does it Play Tag?

Rawlins’s characterization of the hippocampus as a “high-capacity, immediate-term memory store” captures the essential idea in a number of previous models. For example, Gaffan (1974), Gray (1984), Hirsh (1980), Kesner (Bierley, Kesner & Novak 1983), Olton (Olton, Becker & Handelmann 1979), Solomon (1980), and Winocur (1980) all agree that hippocampal animals show memory deficits when required to identify, for whatever reason, one specific event out of a list of recent events. Although these authors disagree on a number of details, Rawlins has identified their models common ground, the core of each model. (It is only fair to note that Gaffan has considerably modified his ideas about the hippocampus; cf. Gaffan, Saunders, Gaffan, Harrison, Shields & Owen 1984.)