Image from Eichenbaum (2000)

Memory in action: The role(s) of the hippocampus in decisions for reward Cosyne workshops, Snowbird, Utah. March 10th, 2015 Organizers: Aaron M. Bornstein and G. Elliott Wimmer

The hippocampus has long been understood to play a critical role in flexible relational learning, episodic memory, and navigation. More recently, a growing body of work implicates the hippocampus in value-based decision making. However, a dichotomy exists between research performed in different organisms and from distinct theoretical traditions. For instance, results in rodent models support an active role for the hippocampus in evaluating potential next-step actions and outcomes. Meanwhile, human research has mainly emphasized the role of the hippocampus in forming representations that may then support later decisions. Other divisions concern the nature of spatial versus more general relational processing, various algorithms for active sampling in support of decisions, and whether the hippocampus plays a part in tasks that require short-term memory or well-learned outcomes. These divergences are in part due to different experimental methods, but they also reveal fundamental gaps in the theory. Computational treatments exist that offer normative justifications for each of these roles, but to date few efforts have been made to unify these observations.  

This workshop brings together for the first time many of the researchers behind the primary work to discuss the emerging computational frameworks that describe the role - or roles - of the hippocampus in decision making. Participants will work to understand what might be the core computations performed by the hippocampus to guide reward-based decision making and goal-directed behavior.