# Cortical-hippocampal interactions underlying rapid learning in naturalistic environments

> **NIH NIH U19** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2020 · $611,568

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 The ability of the mammalian brain to store and later retrieve information is remarkable. Detailed, complex
memories can be formed after as little as one exposure, and those memories can be retained for decades.
This ability is compromised following damage to the hippocampus, and interaction between the hippocampus
and the neocortex is thought to be critical for systems memory consolidation. Impaired memory is a debilitating
consequence of diseases such as temporal lobe epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, depression, and schizophrenia
that collectively affect over twenty-five million Americans. However, our understanding of the circuit
mechanisms that support memory consolidation and rapid new learning is incomplete, particularly in the
primate brain. Our long-range goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms that
underlie memory processes to bring us closer to developing new therapies for these disabled patients.
Psychological theories and behavioral studies have suggested that rapid, single-trial accumulation of
information is facilitated by prior knowledge, a “mental schema” that provides a framework onto which new
information can be assimilated. The hippocampus is considered to be critical for extracting and representing
regularities that hold across learning episodes, and these regularities constitute the cognitive schema.
Determining how the hippocampus supports this cognitive framework will be critical to understanding the
hippocampal-neocortical interactions that are necessary for memory consolidation. The experiments proposed
here will directly examine hippocampal-cortical interactions during learning and consolidation. We propose to
utilize newly available technical developments to advance our understanding of the mechanism that support
rapid new learning. Specifically, we propose to perform large-scale recordings from individual neurons
throughout the hippocampus, parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex in monkeys trained to perform a task of
object-place association in virtual environments. We will use stable and unstable environments to examine the
impact of a schema on association learning and neural activity, and we will track neural activity during learning
to investigate the mechanisms that support the formation of a schema. The proposed experiments have the
following potential outcomes: 1) to identify the network activity across single units in the hippocampus, parietal
and prefrontal cortex in support of object-place association learning, 2) to identify the dynamics of cross-
regional communication through synchronized oscillatory activity during schema development and rapid
learning, and 3) to identify hippocampal-cortical interaction during sleep and quiet wakefulness and determine
how this interaction impacts memory consolidation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9983231
- **Project number:** 5U19NS107609-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Elizabeth A Buffalo
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $611,568
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-15 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9983231

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9983231, Cortical-hippocampal interactions underlying rapid learning in naturalistic environments (5U19NS107609-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9983231. Licensed CC0.

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