Summary of Hippocampal Studies since 1957:
1. Required for certain kinds of memory; spatial in rodents; facts and
faces in humans.
2. Rodent hippocampal neurons are “place cells”; ‘fire’ when animal
moves into marked area.
3. Hippocampal synapses exhibit LTP (paradigm for synaptic
plasticity).
Tsien et al: use cre/loxP recombination system to delete NMDA
receptor function only in CA1 subregion.
THUS: By effecting CA1-specific NMDA receptor inactivation, the
studies relate synaptic plasticity to neuronal activity (place fields)
and to spatial learning.