RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Goal-centered representations in the human hippocampus
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.08.18.456881
DO 10.1101/2021.08.18.456881
A1 Crivelli-Decker, Jordan
A1 Clarke, Alex
A1 Park, Seongmin A.
A1 Huffman, Derek J.
A1 Boorman, Erie
A1 Ranganath, Charan
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/07/2021.08.18.456881.abstract
AB Recent work in cognitive and systems neuroscience has suggested that the hippocampus might support planning, imagination, and navigation by forming “cognitive maps” that capture the structure of physical spaces, tasks, and situations. Critically, navigation involves planning within a context and disambiguating similar contexts to reach a goal. We examined hippocampal activity patterns in humans during a goal-directed navigation task to examine how contextual and goal information are incorporated in the construction and execution of navigational plans. Results demonstrate that, during planning, the hippocampus carries a context-specific representation of a future goal. Importantly, this effect could not be explained by stimulus or spatial information alone. During navigation, we observed reinstatement of activity patterns in the hippocampus ahead of participants’ required actions, which was strongest for behaviorally relevant points in the sequence. These results suggest that, rather than simply representing overlapping associations, hippocampal activity patterns are powerfully shaped by context and goals.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.