Particularly wrt spatial cognition and navigation. It is well know that the right MTL/hippocampal formation is highly involved in spatial information processing but in some special cases, the left side can also be involved. In the latter scenario, what functional roles are played by left MTL activation and how do they differ from the processes engaged by the right MTL?
I think its one contributing aspect/part of our perceptual memory systems. According to Baxter (2009); Suzuki, (2009) the entorhinal cortex is a part of the medial temporal lobe memory system, where some researchers think that this has a specific perceptual function. Hope this helps?
The entorhinal cortex is the gateway for information entering and leaving the hippocampal formation. The entorhinal cortex is a component of the medial temporal lobe memory system, although it is increasingly believed to have a perceptual function (Baxter, 2009; Suzuki, 2009).
https://www.sciencedirect.com › topics
Entorhinal Cortex - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
The entorhinal cortex is part of the medial temporal lobe or hippocampal memory system and constitutes the major gateway between the hippocampal formation and the neocortex.Nov 3, 2013
http://www.scholarpedia.org › article
Entorhinal cortex - Scholarpedia
Kudos to Ken Drinkwater and Faraed Salman for answering my question. I've figured it out myself, based on current pieces of experimental evidence suggesting that the the left MTL (hippocampus, entorhinal cortex) may be more specialized than the right MTL (largely involved in spatial reasoning and computation processes, lots of findings showing this) in analytical, perceptual, and recognition aspects of information processing. Snippets concerning these functional differences between these two hemispheric regions can be found from a forthcoming paper of mine:
"...these findings may not seem so surprising if one considers the fact that these left hemispheric activations did not represent the spatial computations associated with homing responses conducted over a single type of homebound path, but rather a decision-making process concerning an allocation of cognitive resources for carrying out homing responses between complex and simple paths. The latter process does not need to engage spatial mechanisms lateralized to the right hippocampal formation per se, given the fact that other processes like recognition and route- or goal-directed planning, which have been found to engage the left hippocampal formation (for left hippocampus, see Spiers & Maguire, 2006; Sherrill et al., 2013; for left entorhinal cortex, see Bellgowan et al., 2009), can play a part...."
Worthy of mention here is the article by Bellgowan et al. (2009):
Article Lateralized spatial and object memory encoding in entorhinal...
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