<p>This theoretical review consists of three parts. The first part provides an overview of the literature on the role of context in the organization of goal-directed behavior. It defines context and examines cognitive maps and the brain’s navigational abilities, the characteristics of contextual memory, engram retrieval pathways, and the mechanisms of consolidation and reconsolidation of contextual memory. The second part provides a brief overview of the literature on the role of motivation in the organization of goal-directed activity. This part examines the main neurophysiological theories of motivational behavior: the drive reduction and induction hypothesis, the role of operant movements in motivational behavior, the incentive motivation hypothesis, the hedonic hypothesis, and others. The third theoretical part examines possible mechanisms of interaction between context and motivation from the perspective of our concept of a functional system for the organization of goal-directed behavior. This concept explains the formation and significance of context and motivation, as well as their interaction in the consolidation and retrieval of memory engrams. It is suggested that motivational arousal selectively affects those neurons involved in the structure of the activated memory engram, leaving unactivated neurons unaffected. It is believed that the formation and plastic modification of a memory engram involve the formation of not only contextual maps of space, but also specialized “motivational keys” linked to them, or codes for decoding these maps. During memory consolidation, “motivational keys” activate contextual maps and facilitate the formation of associative links between the elements of the engram. Thus, the formation of a memory engram involves selective activation of specific neural networks in which contextual maps of space and the “motivational keys” to them overlap and function as a single complex. When retrieving an engram, motivational arousal “scans” memory and searches for the engram (or engrams) corresponding to the sought-after environment in which training was initially carried out leading to acquisition of the conditioned connection. Activation of this engram requires coincidence of the “motivational key” with the arrival of the corresponding contextual information in its neural network.</p>