ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY AND HIPPOCAMPAL PLACE CELLS
Many hippocampal pyramidal neurons in rats are selectively activated at specific places in the environment. We present a network model for the CA3 area of the hippocampus. The network produced place selective activity even when the external sensory input was broadly tuned and noisy. The model predicts that the place fields should be nonuniformly distributed, clustering in the places where the synaptic interactions between neurons is strongeest. This may occur at locations of special significance, such as locations where there has been food in the past.