[6] The subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus is one of only two major sites of adult neurogenesis in the brain, and is found in many mammals.

[20] Between the hilus and the granule cell layer is a region called the subgranular zone which is a site of adult neurogenesis.

[35] It remains unclear how the hippocampus enables new memory formation, but one process, called long term potentiation (LTP), occurs in this brain region.

[22] While the dentate gyrus shows LTP, it is also one of the few regions of the mammalian brain where adult neurogenesis (the formation of new neurons) takes place.

[37] Correspondingly, it has been proposed that the immature, newborn granule cells are receptive to form new synaptic connections with the axons arriving from the layer II of the entorhinal cortex, this way a particular new constellation of events is remembered as an episodic memory by first associating the events in the young granule cells that have the appropriate, permissive age.

[38] This concept is reinforced by the fact that increased neurogenesis is associated with improved spatial memory in rodents, as seen through performance in a maze.

While the CA3 subfield is involved in encoding, storage, and retrieval of memory, the dentate gyrus is important in pattern separation.

Granule cells in the dentate gyrus process sensory information using competitive learning, and relay a preliminary representation to form place fields.

[43] Place fields are extremely specific, as they are capable of remapping and adjusting firing rates in response to subtle sensory signal changes.

[47] Studies by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center indicate that poor glucose control can lead to deleterious effects on the dentate gyrus, resulting in memory decline.

[49] Several experiments have shown neurogenesis (the development of nerve tissues) often increases in the dentate gyrus of adult rodents when they are exposed to an enriched environment.

[50][51] Studies have shown that after having about 90% of their dentate gyrus cells destroyed, rats had extreme difficulty in maneuvering through a maze they had previously navigated.

When being tested a number of times to see whether they could learn a maze, the results showed that the rats did not improve at all, indicating that their working memories were severely impaired.

[52] Exploration of a novel environment, a natural behavior of young and adult wild-type mice, causes double-strand breaks (DSBs) in their neurons.

[53] DSBs occur in multiple brain regions and are most frequent in the dentate gyrus which is involved in learning and memory.