Normal and amnesic learning, recognition and memory by a neural model of cortico-hippocampal interactions.

The processes by which humans and other primates learn to recognize objects have been the subject of many models. Processes such as learning, categorization, attention, memory search, expectation and novelty detection work together at different stages to realize object recognition. In this article, Gail Carpenter and Stephen Grossberg describe one such class of model (Adaptive Resonance Theory, ART) and discuss how its structure and function might relate to known neurological learning and memory processes, such as how infero-temporal cortex can recognize both specialized and abstract information, and how medial temporal amnesia might be caused by lesions in the hippocampal formation. This model also suggests how hippocampal and inferotemporal processing might be linked during recognition learning.