The goal of our target article was to review a number of
emerging facts about the effects of limbic damage on memory in humans
and animals, and about divisions within recognition memory in humans.
We then argued that this information can be synthesized to produce a
new view of the substrates of episodic memory. The key pathway in this
system is from the hippocampus to the anterior thalamic nuclei. There
seems to be a general agreement that the importance of this pathway
has previously been underestimated and that it warrants further study.
At the same time, a number of key questions remain. These concern the
relationship of this system to another temporal-lobe/diencephalic
system that contributes to recognition, and the relationship of these
systems to prefrontal cortex activity.
