CHAPTER 6
Computations in Memory
Systems in the Brain
Edmund T. Rolls
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OXl 3UD,
United Kingdom; www.cns.ox.ac.uk
I. INTRODUCTION
This chapter describes memory systems in the brain based on closely linked
neurobiological and computational approaches. The neurobiological approaches
include evidence from brain lesions, which show the type of memory for which
each of the brain systems considered is necessary, and analysis of neuronal
activity in each of these systems to show what information is represented in
them and the changes that take place during learning. Much of the neuro-
biology considered is from nonhuman primates as well as humans, because the
operation of some of the brain systems involved in memory and the systems
connected to them have undergone great development in primates. Some such
brain systems include those in the temporal lobe, which develops massively in
primates for vision and which sends inputs to the hippocampus via highly
developed parahippocampal regions, and the prefrontal cortex. Many memory
systems in primates receive outputs from the primate inferior temporal visual
cortex, and understanding the perceptual representations in this of objects and
how they are appropriate as inputs to different memory systems helps to
provide a coherent way to understand the different memory systems in the
brain (see Rolls and Deco, 2002, which provides a more extensive treatment
of the brain architectures used for perception and memory). The computational
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