Assuming that locations can be regarded analogous to discrete items (Fig. 6F; Dragoi and Buzsáki, 2006; Lisman and Idiart, 1995), the temporal compression mechanism can limit the “attention span” and the “register capacity” of the memory “buffer” of the gamma-nested theta-cycle to 7 to 9 items (Lisman 1999; Lisman and Idiart, 1995; Jensen and Lisman, 1996; Hasselmo et al., 2002).14 In this latter context, the sigmoid relationship suggests that the spatiotemporal resolution of an episodic recall is high for the conditions/context that surround a recalled event, whereas the relationships among items representing the far past or far future, relative to the recalled event, are progressively less resolved (Diba and Buzsáki, 2008). However, as the content of the recall moves forward in perceived time, subsequent events gain high contextual resolution (Dragoi and Buzsáki, 2006). The theta dynamic-controlled delays imply that the speed of recall is generic and independent of the temporal relations of the items presented during encoding.
