The ventral hippocampus: computations, circuits and functions.

The rodent ventral hippocampus (vHPC) integrates external cues with internal state to flexibly update an affective-motivational map that guides multiple motivated behaviors.

• Why it matters: Affective and motivated behaviors depend on how cue meaning changes with both learned associations and current physiological state, yet the circuit computations linking these signals remain unclear.
• What they did: This Review synthesizes rodent vHPC behavioral roles, response properties, and local and long-range circuitry, emphasizing how computations are distributed across projection-defined neuronal subpopulations.
• The result: The proposed affective-motivational map framework suggests that shared representational architecture supports fear, reward seeking, feeding, social behavior, and stress, enabling flexible downstream readout across motivational domains.

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