and Lisman, 1998) and to separate dynamics of associative synaptic encoding and retrieval (Hasselmo et al., 2002). One of the seminal discoveries in the context of mediotemporal theta oscillations was the phenomenon of phase precession (O'Keefe and Recce, 1993; Skaggs et al., 1996). By firing periodically but with a slight frequency mismatch relative to their local field theta activity, place cells in the rodent hippocampus create a temporal code – defined by the phase relationship to the concurrent theta cycle – that can represent the position of an animal more accurately and dissociated from the place cell's firing rate (Huxter et al., 2003).
