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Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations

View ORCID ProfileSandhiya Vijayabaskaran, View ORCID ProfileSen Cheng
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.22.497126
Sandhiya Vijayabaskaran
1Institute for Neural Computation, Faculty of Computer Science, Ruhr University Bochum
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Sen Cheng
1Institute for Neural Computation, Faculty of Computer Science, Ruhr University Bochum
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Abstract

In general, strategies for spatial navigation could employ one of two spatial reference frames: egocentric or allocentric. Notwithstanding intuitive explanations, it remains unclear however under what circumstances one strategy is chosen over another, and how neural representations should be related to the chosen strategy. Here, we first use a deep reinforcement learning model to investigate whether a particular type of navigation strategy arises spontaneously during spatial learning without imposing a bias onto the model. We then examine the spatial representations that emerge in the network to support navigation. To this end, we study two tasks that are ethologically valid for mammals – guidance, where the agent has to navigate to a goal location fixed in allocentric space, and aiming, where the agent navigates to a visible cue. We find that when both navigation strategies are available to the agent, the solutions it develops for guidance and aiming are heavily biased towards the allocentric or the egocentric strategy, respectively, as one might expect. Nevertheless, the agent can learn both tasks using either type of strategy. Furthermore, we find that place-cell-like allocentric representations emerge preferentially in guidance when using an allocentric strategy, whereas egocentric vector representations emerge when using an egocentric strategy in aiming. We thus find that alongside the type of navigational strategy, the nature of the task plays a pivotal role in the type of spatial representations that emerge.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted June 23, 2022.
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Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
Sandhiya Vijayabaskaran, Sen Cheng
bioRxiv 2022.06.22.497126; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.22.497126
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Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
Sandhiya Vijayabaskaran, Sen Cheng
bioRxiv 2022.06.22.497126; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.22.497126

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