Center for Memory and Brain, Boston University, 2 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2013 Feb;17(2):81-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2012.12.007. Epub 2013 Jan 12.
Considerable recent work has shown that the hippocampus is critical for remembering the order of events in distinct experiences, a defining feature of episodic memory. Correspondingly, hippocampal neuronal activity can 'replay' sequential events in memories and hippocampal neuronal ensembles represent a gradually changing temporal context signal. Most strikingly, single hippocampal neurons - called time cells - encode moments in temporally structured experiences much as the well-known place cells encode locations in spatially structured experiences. These observations bridge largely disconnected literatures on the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory and spatial mapping, and suggest that the fundamental function of the hippocampus is to establish spatio-temporal frameworks for organizing memories.
最近大量的研究表明，海马体对于记忆不同经历中事件的顺序至关重要，这是情景记忆的一个重要特征。相应地，海马体神经元的活动可以“重放”记忆中的顺序事件，并且海马体神经元集合代表着逐渐变化的时间上下文信号。最引人注目的是，单个海马体神经元——称为时间细胞——编码时间结构经验中的时刻，就像著名的位置细胞编码空间结构经验中的位置一样。这些观察结果将情景记忆和空间映射中海马体作用的两个原本相互独立的文献联系起来，并表明海马体的基本功能是为组织记忆建立时空框架。
