How do the hippocampus, glutamate, and dopamine work in the
brain? This is a broad question, and I can't answer it
thoroughly here. I hope to give you enough of a trail through
the different parts of the answer so that you can research the
areas that really interest you. The hippocampus is a seahorse-
shaped structure in the brain that is primarily involved in
learning and memory. In particular, the formation of long-term
memory cannot occur when parts of the medial temporal lobe of
the brain, which includes the hippocampus, are removed. This
information comes from the famous case of H.M., a patient in the
Boston area. He remembers events that occurred years before the
surgery that removed his medial temporal lobe, but he has not
been able to form any long-term memories since his surgery. Much
research (thousands of papers now) has focused on a phenomenon
called LTP, or long-term potentiation, in two regions of the
hippocampus (called CA1 and CA3). Studies in numerous labs
across the world show that the synaps