Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Annu Rev Psychol. 2010;61:27-48, C1-8. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163508.
Traditionally, the hippocampal system has been studied in relation to the goal of retrieving memories about the past. Recent work in humans and rodents suggests that the hippocampal system may be better understood as a system that facilitates predictions about upcoming events. The hippocampus and associated cortical structures are active when people envision future events, and damage that includes the hippocampal region impairs this ability. In rats, hippocampal ensembles preplay and replay event sequences in the absence of overt behavior. If strung together in novel combinations, these sequences could provide the neural building blocks for simulating upcoming events during decision-making, planning, and when imagining novel scenarios. Moreover, in both humans and rodents, the hippocampal system is spontaneously active during task-free epochs and sleep, further suggesting that the system may use idle moments to derive new representations that set the context for future behaviors.
传统上，人们一直研究海马体系统与检索过去记忆的目标之间的关系。最近在人类和啮齿动物中的研究表明，海马体系统可以更好地理解为一个有助于预测即将发生的事件的系统。当人们想象未来的事件时，海马体和相关的皮质结构会活跃起来，而包括海马体区域在内的损伤会损害这种能力。在大鼠中，海马体集合在没有明显行为的情况下预演和重演事件序列。如果将这些序列以新颖的组合串联在一起，它们可以为在决策、规划和想象新场景时模拟即将发生的事件提供神经构建块。此外，在人类和啮齿动物中，海马体系统在无任务期和睡眠期间自发活跃，这进一步表明该系统可能利用空闲时间得出新的表示，为未来的行为设定上下文。
