, 2007). In parallel, it is noteworthy that the outcome of research on brain and cognitive mechanisms of memory spills into key aspects of daily life and society (Schacter and Loftus, 2013). The growth of “social neuroscience” portends growing interest in social aspects of memory BMS-777607 research buy in both human and animal-based neuroscience. Similarly, it seems

that more attention is devoted to the effectiveness of realistic milieu in animal models used in memory research, with renewed emphasis on the real-life cognitive universe of rodents (particularly space, odors, somatosensory stimuli, and their interactions, e.g., Morris et al., 2006, Sauvage et al., 2008 and Buzsáki and Moser, 2013). The general understanding, itself rooted in several older animal psychology schools and now resurrected, is that animals learn better when the memoranda make sense in their world. Hints of a similar trend seem to emerge in the primate literature as well (Paxton et al., 2010). It is likely that widespread use of novel consumer technology (such as Google-type

glasses or personal activity monitors), miniaturization of noninvasive functional imaging devices for humans, and facilitated real-time web communication will render more realistic memory experiments easier and more popular. The dominant taxonomy of memory systems, echoing earlier philosophical notions (Ryle, 1949), was shaped by studies of “global amnesics” like H.M. and other patients (Scoville and Milner, 1957, Rosenbaum et al., 2005 and Squire and Wixted, 2011), supported by lesion studies in animal models (Mishkin,

1982, Olton DAPT molecular weight et al., 1979 and Fanselow, 2010). It has long portrayed the brain as possessing two major types of memory systems—declarative (explicit) memory for facts and events, for people, places, and objects (“knowing that”) and nondeclarative (implicit) memory, the memory for perceptual and motor skills (“knowing how”). Whereas declarative memory is held to involve particular types of representation and conscious awareness for recollection, it also requires an intact hippocampus—at least at the time that a memory is acquired. In contrast, nondeclarative memory is thought Rolziracetam to be a heterogeneous collection of experience-dependent changes shown in behavior and not to rely on the hippocampus but on a number of other brain systems: the cerebellum, the striatum, the amygdala, and, particularly in invertebrates, simple reflex pathways themselves. This taxonomy was immensely useful as a conceptual framework for both human and animal studies, in teaching where it is little short of a blessing, and as an engine for new experimental programs. Recent ideas and data, however, have raised questions about this taxonomy. One issue relates to what can be concluded from brain damage/lesion studies, which identify necessity, compared to physiological approaches, which measure correlates of a presumed process—be it in neural firing, BOLD, IEG activation, or in other ways.