Memory-related processing is the primary driver of human hippocampal theta oscillations.

Decades of work in rodents suggest that movement is a powerful driver of hippocampal low-frequency "theta" oscillations. Puzzlingly, such movement-related theta increases in primates are less sustained and of lower frequency, leading to questions about their functional relevance. Verbal memory encoding and retrieval lead to robust increases in low-frequency oscillations in humans, and one possibility is that memory might be a stronger driver of hippocampal theta oscillations in humans than navigation.