Aranzio's Seahorse and the Search for Memory and Consciousness

Abstract Completing a neuroscience trilogy, prize-winning author Alan McComas recounts the research that led to the hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain, as being primarily responsible for memory. The intriguing and exciting account includes observations on patients with memory loss as well as insights from ingenious laboratory experiments. Using several arguments, McComas suggests that it is the electrical activity of neurons in the hippocampus that creates consciousness and that the latter is, in fact, the ever-changing sequence of short-term memories. With its many illustrations and referenced sources ‘Aranzio’s Seahorse’ will be of value not only to neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers but to all those interested in the brain and in the history of its exploration. Its relevance for a fuller understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders of memory including ‘long’ COVID is obvious.