Regina Weilbächer and Sebastian Gluth have a new paper that reviews the roles as well as the interplay of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in memory-based decisions.

The Interplay of Hippocampus and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory-Based Decision Making

Episodic memory and value-based decision making are two widely studied psychological constructs. The hippocampus plays a central role in episodic memory, while the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is essential in value-based decision making.

In our review, we focus on the hippocampal-prefrontal interactions in value-based decisions that require memory retrieval. We briefly present two methods used to investigate the coupling of those two brain regions, such as the phase coherence across specific frequency ranges (i.e. theta and gamma band synchrony) and dynamic causal modeling of fMRI data. Additionally we present theories and frameworks resulting from these connectivity studies. In the end we raise open questions that need to be addressed in future investigations.

In summary, this review article gives an overview of the current research regarding the interplay of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in memory and value-based decisions and discusses directions for future research on the neural and cognitive foundations of those decisions.

Weilbächer, R. A., & Gluth, S. (2017). The Interplay of Hippocampus and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory-Based Decision Making. Brain Sciences, 7(1), 4.