Hippocampus

• One widely explored subcortical area is the hippocampus. (It's even got its own journal.)
• A reasonable paper for this is The hippocampus by Knierim 2015.
• There is extensive work with place cells.
• You can stick an electrode in a rat's hippocampus (in the right place) and particular neurons will fire when the rat is in a particular place.
• There's pretty substantial evidence that this also works for humans (and other animals).
• It's also essential for episodic memory