RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A non-spatial account of place and grid cells based on clustering models of concept learning
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 421842
DO 10.1101/421842
A1 Robert M. Mok
A1 Bradley C. Love
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/19/421842.1.abstract
AB One view is that conceptual knowledge is organized as a “cognitive map” in the brain, using the circuitry in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) that supports spatial navigation. In contrast, we find that a domain-general learning algorithm explains key findings in both spatial and conceptual domains. When the clustering model is applied to spatial navigation tasks, so called place and grid cells emerge because of the relatively uniform sampling of possible inputs in these tasks. The same mechanism applied to conceptual tasks, where the overall space can be higher-dimensional and sampling sparser, leads to representations more aligned with human conceptual knowledge. Although the types of memory supported by the MTL are superficially dissimilar, the information processing steps appear shared.