The richness of this subject has become apparent with the development of tests assessing an increasing array of aspects of cognitive function. This, coupled with intelligent use of structural and to an increasing extent functional, brain imaging, encourages the development of developmental brain/behaviour modules as never before.

It is timely then to have a book which reviews progress in the area—even if only to show the gaps in our understanding and the vast amount of work remaining to be done.

Arthur Benton, the doyen of localisation, provides an interesting historical perspective in an introductory chapter.

There follows one of four chapters by his coeditor Daria Riva, the first on memory and temporomesial structures. The clinical literature is usefully presented; general conclusions are offered as fact rather than as the hypotheses they are—although none the less interesting for that—namely, that the cerebral cortex stores information which is then codified in parahippocampal structures. The function of the hippocampus is to analyse the components of experience and to construct relations between different aspects of experience in flexible and potentially …