A gatekeeper for learning

One of the most challenging goals of neuroscience is to unravel the biological underpinnings of cognitive functions. A necessary first step is to determine where in the brain cognition arises. In the past decades, the proposal that specific cognitive functions are localized within discrete brain regions has evolved into the theory that cognition is produced by the coordinated action of interconnected neurons across multiple areas. This is the case for the ability to learn from personal experiences, which might depend on the interplay between the parahippocampal-hippocampal network and the neocortex (1). On page 1435 of this issue, Doron et al. (2) reveal that inputs from the perirhinal cortex, one of the parahippocampal areas, modulate the activity of deep-layer pyramidal neurons in the primary somatosensory cortex, a region of the cerebral cortex that processes sensation, to control learning.