Question: what does the hippocampus do in your brain

title: Hippocampus
text: Over the years , three main ideas of hippocampal function have dominated the literature : response inhibition , episodic memory , and spatial cognition . The behavioral inhibition theory ( caricatured by John O'Keefe and Lynn Nadel as `` slam on the brakes ! '' ) was very popular up to the 1960s . It derived much of its justification from two observations : first , that animals with hippocampal damage tend to be hyperactive ; second , that animals with hippocampal damage often have difficulty learning to inhibit responses that they have previously been taught , especially if the response requires remaining quiet as in a passive avoidance test . Jeffrey Gray developed this line of thought into a full - fledged theory of the role of the hippocampus in anxiety . The inhibition theory is currently the least popular of the three .