Module 7 — Outputs and the Hippocampal Loop

chill, uk spoken poetry, jazz, bass and piano, slow · 4:22

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Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Talk about the perforant path, the two-lane bridge
Layer two's the courier running straight off the ridge
Dumps its cargo in dentate gyrus, granule cell bin
Then CA3 catches the echo, lets the pattern spin
Layer three's a different courier, different route to run
Skips the dentate detour, goes straight to CA1
Temporoammonic highway, subiculum too
Same building, different floors, different work to do

[Chorus]
Two in, one out, that's the entorhinal deal
Layer two and three keep the memory wheel
Dorsolateral rides the dorsal train
Ventromedial ships to ventral terrain
Perforant path punches through, mnemonic hit
Two feeds the bin, three feeds CA one, get it

[Verse 2]
Topography ain't random, it's a map you can trust
Dorsolateral MEC, dorsal hippocampus, must
Handle the fine-grain grid, the small-scale spatial code
Ventromedial slides on down the ventral road
Broader scale, wider fields, coarser zone
Same six-layer structure, different postal home
Witter mapped the wiring back in 2007
Fibers perforating through like a needle, keen and even

[Chorus]
Two in, one out, that's the entorhinal deal
Layer two and three keep the memory wheel
Dorsolateral rides the dorsal train
Ventromedial ships to ventral terrain
Perforant path punches through, mnemonic hit
Two feeds the bin, three feeds CA one, get it

[Verse 3]
Now flip the tape, the loop don't dead-end at CA1
Subiculum and CA1 ship output, work is done
Climbing back to layer five, the deep return address
Layer five sends out to neocortex, clears the mess
But layer five ain't finished, got one more errand yet
Feeds right back to layers two and three, no debt unmet
That's the loop sealed tight, recurrent, self-renewed
Cortex whispers to hippocampus, hippocampus answers too

[Bridge]
Direct path: layer three straight to CA one, comparing lanes
Indirect: layer two through dentate, trisynaptic chains
Suh eleven showed us — novelty lights the indirect line
Direct path handles matching, the familiar sign
Compare what's new against what's old, that's the CA1 chore
Two routes converge on one cell, novelty at the door

[Verse 4]
Complete the graph from module six, add the labeled edge
Layer two, arrow dentate, arrow CA3, the ledge
Layer three, arrow CA one, arrow subiculum too
Five, arrow cortex, five, arrow two and three, loop renews
Draw it clean, six layers, arrows pointing right
Perforant path's the highway, edge connected to edge

[Chorus]
Two in, one out, that's the entorhinal deal
Layer two and three keep the memory wheel
Dorsolateral rides the dorsal train
Ventromedial ships to ventral terrain
Perforant path punches through, mnemonic hit
Two feeds the bin, three feeds CA one, get it

[Outro]
Two feeds the bin, three feeds the one
Five sends it home when the circuit's done
Dorsal to dorsal, ventral to ventral flow
Close the loop, that's the entorhinal show

← Module 6 — Inputs to the Entorhinal Cortex | Module 8 — Grid Cells →