Hippocampus Thomas Henry Huxley and Richard Owen, satirised as the Great Hippocampus Question. The term hippocampus minor fell from use in anatomy textbooks, and was officially removed in the Nomina Anatomica of 1895. Today, the structure is just called the hippocampus, with the term "Cornu Ammonis" surviving in the names of the hippocampal subfields CA1-CA4. The term "limbic system" was introduced in 1952 by Paul MacLean to describe the set of structures that line the edge of the cortex (Latin "limbus" meaning "border"): These include the hippocampus, cingulate cortex, olfactory cortex, and amygdala. Paul MacLean later suggested that the limbic structures
Hippocampal memory encoding and retrieval There are two steps to encoding: acquisition and consolidation. During acquisition, stimuli are committed to short term memory. Consolidation is where the hippocampus along with other cortical structures stabilize an object within long term memory, a process strengthening over time and one for which a number of theories have arisen to explain. After encoding, the hippocampus is capable of going through the retrieval process. The retrieval process consists of accessing stored information; this allows learned behaviors to experience conscious depiction and execution. Encoding and retrieval are both affected by neurodegenerative and anxiety disorders and epilepsy. Meta-positron emission tomography (PET) analysis