The hippocampus is constantly constructing mental scenes of the world beyond what our senses detect—automatically anticipating and synthesising representations of places and events we are not currently experiencing. This matters because the hippocampus is central to episodic memory, imagining the future, and spatial navigation, yet no unified theory explains how it does all three. The standard view treats these as separate functions; this researcher argues they all depend on the brain's ability to build scenes. If correct, it would resolve a long-standing debate about how long the hippocampus holds onto specific memories—a question that currently lacks consensus—and clarify what neighbouring brain regions (parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortices) actually do, rather than simply calling them "scene-selective." This is fundamental science. If successful, it would provide a theoretically enriched understanding of how memory works and what goes wrong in hippocampal pathology. That deeper understanding could eventually inform diagnostic approaches for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, or epilepsy, where memory and navigation impairments are common. Similar fundamental discoveries about hippocampal function have previously underpinned advances in everything from navigation apps to treatments for amnesia.
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My first goal is to provide a unified and mechanistic account of how the hippocampus supports episodic memory, imagining the future and spatial navigation. I will leverage this long-standing question by eschewing traditional notions regarding the architecture of memory and instead invoke the idea that scenes are central to hippocampal information-processing. This new direction is motivated by my recent discovery that the hippocampus is constantly constructing scenes; automatically anticipating and synthesising representations of the world beyond the immediate sensorium. I will characterise the precise relationship between scenes and hippocampal function, and then establish whether an inability to construct scenes explains impairments in memory, imagination and navigation arising from hippocampal pathology. Capitalising on newly-developed fMRI methods, I recently identified neural signatures of specific recent and remote episodic memories. My second goal is to exploit this new l ine of investigation to determine the exact timescale of hippocampal involvement in episodic memory, a key issue which currently lacks consensus. My third goal is to definitively establish what aspects of hippocampal processing are distinct from neighbouring brain areas, specifically the parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortices. Informed by my recent advances, my strategy abjures the common view that these regions are 'scene-selective' by instead identifying their most basic functions to elucidate their differential contributions to memory. Overall, this new extension of my research could release the hippocampus and related brain regions from currently constrained accounts of their function, with the ambition to provide a theoretically enriched understanding of their fundamental roles and their breakdown in pathology.
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