How is hippocampal learning, including place learning, translated into behavior? The hippocampus integrates, along its septotemporal axis, substrates of rapid place learning, including entorhinal-hippocampal connectivity, with functional connectivity to subcortical sites and prefrontal cortex, which play central roles in behavioral-control functions, including sensorimotor, emotional, motivational, attentional, and executive functions. I present recent evidence that such integration, for which the intermediate hippocampus is a key neuroanatomical substrate, enables translation of rapid place learning into adaptive behavior. What are the clinical implications of the hippocampal learning-behavior translation? Focusing on hippocampal overactivity, which has emerged as a central feature of schizophrenia pathophysiology, I highlight how, due to functional connectivity enabling the learning-behavior translation, hippocampal dysfunction may cause not only memory deficits, but also neural-network disruptions underlying psychosis and attentional and executive deficits.
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