What's in a context? Cautions, limitations, and potential paths forward

The purpose of memory is to guide current and future behavior based on previous experiences. Part of this process involves either discriminating between or generalizing across similar experiences that contain overlapping conditions (such as space, time, or internal state), which we often conceptualize as “contexts”. In this review, we highlight major challenges facing the field as we attempt a neuroscience-based approach to the study of context and its impact on learning and memory. Here, we review some of the methodologies and approaches used to investigate context in both animals and humans, including the neurobiological mechanisms involved. Finally, we propose three tenets for operationalizing context in the experimental setting: 1) contexts must be stable over time along an experiential dimension; 2) contexts must be at least moderately complex in nature and their representations must be modifiable or adaptable, and 3) contexts must have some behavioral relevance (be it overt or incidental) so that its role can be measured.