Career
He is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University. He is the Editor in Chief of the journal Hippocampus. Professor Eichenbaum has performed extensive research on the role of the hippocampus in memory function, presenting a theory of the role of the hippocampus in forming relational memories.
This work was important for emphasizing the behavioral role of the hippocampus beyond forming spatial representations of the environment.
Eichenbaum and his collaborators performed important early studies emphasizing the non-spatial responses of hippocampal neurons, showing spiking responses selective to individual odors and reward delivery during performance of behavioral tasks. Research by Howard Eichenbaum and his lab members also demonstrated the strong context-dependence of neuronal responses in the hippocampus.
An important study from his lab presented data from rats performing a spatial alternation task with return arms. As the rat ran up the stem of the task on different trials, the spiking response of hippocampal neurons depended on the prior or future response of the rat, showing differential firing even though the location and movement direction of the rat was the same.
This illustrated the strong memory dependence of hippocampal neuronal responses independent of the spatial location and movement of the rat.
Research by Howard Eichenbaum and other researchers has demonstrated that individual neurons in the hippocampus and other regions show spiking activity at specific time intervals during behavioral tasks. Professor Eichenbaum described these neurons as “time cells.” The loss of time cells in the hippocampus may contribute to the loss of episodic memory function described in patient Her Majesty by researchers including Brenda Milner and Suzanne Corkin. Time cells may contribute to the role of the hippocampus in allowing mental time travel in the recall of past episodic memories.
Time cells may code individual time intervals necessary to disambiguate different temporal episodes within an episodic memory.
