Bypassing the hippocampus: Rapid Neocortical Acquisition of Long Term Arbitrary Associations via Fast Mapping Tali Abstract Declerative memory, defined as the conscious recollection of facts and events (Squire, 1992) is believed to be mediated by two separate memory systems (McClelland et and Rudy, 2001; Norman and of al., 1995; O’Reilly O’Reilly, 2003). The initial process the encoding of novel information into memory is believed to be critically dependent on the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system and on the hippocampus in particular. After rapid initial acquisition, a slow process of consolidation takes place, which typically takes few years in humans, by which the information is gradually assimilated into the second memory system, located in various regions of the neocortex. The reason this process is slow is because rapid changes in this system would cause a "catastrophic interference" (French, 1999) with the pre-existing memory structures. According to this theory, it is only after sufficient consolidation has occurred that the information can cease to depend on the hippocampus. However, recent evidence from patients with specific
Bypassing the hippocampus: Rapid Neocortical Acquisition of Long Term Arbitrary Associations via Fast Mapping Tali Abstract Declerative memory, defined as the conscious recollection of facts and events (Squire, 1992) is believed to be mediated by two separate memory systems (McClelland et al., 1995; O’Reilly and Rudy, 2001; Norman and O’Reilly, 2003). The initial process of the encoding of novel information into memory is believed to be critically dependent on the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system and on the hippocampus in particular. After rapid initial acquisition, a slow process of consolidation takes place, which typically takes few years in humans, by which the information is gradually assimilated into the second memory system, located in various regions of the neocortex. The reason this process is slow is because rapid changes in this system would cause a "catastrophic interference" (French, 1999) with the pre-existing memory structures. According to this theory, it is only after sufficient consolidation has occurred that the information can cease to depend on the hippocampus. However, recent evidence from patients with specific