Aggleton & Brown rightly point out the shortcomings of the
medial temporal lobe hypothesis as an approach to anterograde amnesia.
Their broader perspective is a necessary corrective, and one hopes it
will be taken very seriously. Although they correctly note the dangers
of conflating recognition and recall, they themselves make a similar
mistake in discussing familiarity; we suggest an alternative approach.
We also discuss implications of their view for an analysis of
retrograde amnesia. The notion that there are two routes by which
the hippocampus can reactivate neuronal ensembles in the neocortex
could help us understand some currently puzzling facts about the
dynamics of memory consolidation.
