Hippocampus The hippocampus provides animals with a spatial map of their environment. It stores information regarding non-egocentric space (egocentric means in reference to one's body position in space) and therefore supports viewpoint independence in spatial memory. This means that it allows for viewpoint manipulation from memory. It is important for long-term spatial memory of allocentric space (reference to external cues in space). Maintenance and retrieval of memories are thus relational or context dependent. The hippocampus makes use of reference and working memory and has the important role of processing information about spatial locations. Blocking plasticity in this region results in problems in goal-directed navigation and impairs the ability to remember precise locations. Amnesic patients with damage to the hippocampus cannot learn or remember spatial layouts, and patients having undergone hippocampal removal are severely impaired in spatial navigation. Monkeys with lesions to this area cannot learn object-place associations and rats also display spatial deficits by not reacting to spatial change. In addition, rats with hippocampal lesions were shown to have temporally ungraded (time-independent) retrograde amnesia that is resistant to recognition of a learned platform task only when the entire hippocampus is lesioned, but not when it is partially lesioned. Deficits in spatial memory are also found in spatial discrimination tasks. Large differences in spatial impairment are found among the dorsal and ventral hippocampus. Lesions to the ventral hippocampus have no effect on spatial memory, while the dorsal hippocampus is required for retrieval, processing short-term memory and transferring memory from the short term to longer delay periods. Infusion of amphetamine into the dorsal hippocampus has also been shown to enhance memory for spatial locations learned previously. These findings indicate that there is a functional dissociation between the dorsal and ventral hippocampus. Hemispheric differences within the hippocampus are also observed. A study on London taxi drivers, asked drivers to recall complex routes around the city as well as famous landmarks for which the drivers had no knowledge of their spatial location. This resulted in an activation of the right hippocampus solely during recall of the complex routes which indicates that the right hippocampus is used for navigation in large scale spatial environments. The hippocampus is known to contain two separate memory circuits. One circuit is used for recollection-based place recognition memory and includes the entorhinal-CA1 system, while the other system, consisting of the hippocampus trisynaptic loop (entohinal-dentate-CA3-CA1) is used for place recall memory