Why can hippocampal damage make it difficult to learn the location of a goal?

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Patient H.M. and short-term memory loss explained — hippocampus Learn about Henry Molaison (better known as “patient H.M.”), whose short-term memory loss following a lobotomy helped researchers to understand how brain structures are related to brain function.

The hippocampus is essential for forming spatial representations of an environment, which allows an individual to navigate and remember the location of a goal.1

Damage to this area disrupts the function of place cells—neurons that increase their firing rate at specific locations to "map" an environment. Because these cells provide a coherent representation of where an animal or person is currently located, their impairment prevents the brain from effectively storing and retrieving the spatial information needed to plan a route or identify a target destination.1

While other brain regions, such as the striatum, support trial-and-error learning based on sensory stimuli, the hippocampus is specifically required for the allocentric representation of space—understanding locations relative to the environment rather than just the body. Consequently, when the hippocampus is damaged, the ability to learn and navigate to a specific goal is severely compromised.1