>Patients with hippocampal lesions seem to be unable to put new
>information into long term. The hippocampus is conceived as a "memory
>gateway" because of its apparent role in storing long term memories.
Recently I was at a seminar given by Robert Worden on his "fragment
fitting theory" of hippocampal function (a paper is being published in
"Hippocampus" shortly), at which it was suggested that the hippocampus
sorts spatial information, but the longterm memory is elsewhere.
But back to "knowledge"; the brain clearly also contains "non-semantic"
knowledge. Thus certain reflex pathways "know" certain things. eg the
vestibulo-ocular reflex could be said to know that for a given head
rotation a particular eye rotation is required. This is a sort of
knowledge that you could argue your central heating thermostat posseses.
I suspect it is a far from trivial kind of knowledge.
Paul C. Knox
