The ventral hippocampus: computations, circuits and functions

Key Points:

• The hippocampus exhibits functional differentiation along its dorsoventral axis, with dorsal regions primarily involved in spatial memory and navigation, while ventral regions contribute to emotional regulation, anxiety, and social memory.
• Recent studies using single-neuron tracing and molecular profiling have revealed diverse projection patterns and circuit-specific roles of ventral CA1 neurons, linking them to behaviors such as anxiety, fear, social memory, and feeding.
• Ventral hippocampal circuits interact extensively with the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, lateral septum, and hypothalamus, mediating complex behaviors including fear conditioning, approach-avoidance decisions, stress responses, and motivated feeding.
• Neuromodulators such as dopamine, serotonin, ghrelin, and endocannabinoids differentially influence dorsal and ventral hippocampal function, affecting synaptic plasticity, anxiety, reward processing, and stress resilience.
• Human and animal research highlights the hippocampus’s role in abstract cognitive mapping, context representation, and prospective simulation, supporting flexible behavior and decision-making under uncertainty.