Is Virtual Reality a Technique to Study the Human Hippocampus?

Professor James Knierim of Johns Hopkins University describes how the brain processes visual information in ways that enable us to accurately navigate through our environment and remember what we experience during our journeys. Discoveries made during the past several decades have revealed that neuronal circuits in two intimately connected brain regions – the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus – are key to the ‘brain’s GPS’ and the generation of ‘cognitive maps’. These neuronal circuits are of fundamental importance in learning and memory and are the first to degenerate in Alzheimer’s disease.