To answer the seemingly simple question “Have I been here
before?” we must use our memories of previous experiences to determine if our
current location is familiar or novel. In a new study published in the Journal
of Neuroscience researchers from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute have
identified a region of the hippocampus, called CA2, which is sensitive to even
small changes in a familiar context. The results provide the first clue to the
contributions of CA2 to memory and may help shed light on why this area is
often found to be abnormal in the schizophrenic brain.