RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Flexible hippocampal representation of abstract boundaries supports memory-guided choice
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2024.07.23.604745
DO 10.1101/2024.07.23.604745
A1 Esposito, Mariachiara
A1 Abdul, Lubna
A1 Ghouse, Ameer
A1 Rodriguez Aramendía, Marta
A1 Kaplan, Raphael
YR 2024
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/11/29/2024.07.23.604745.abstract
AB Hippocampal cognitive maps encode the relative locations of spatial cues in an environment and adapt their representation when boundaries geometrically change. Hippocampal cognitive maps can represent abstract knowledge, yet it’s unclear whether the hippocampus is sensitive to changes to the extreme coordinates, boundaries, of abstract spaces. We created a memory-guided choice task to test whether the human hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex(mPFC) flexibly learn abstract boundary representations in distinct two-dimensional(2D) knowledge spaces. Participants built up a 2D map-like representation of abstract boundaries, where the hippocampus and mPFC represented a decision cue’s Euclidean distance to the closest boundary. Notably, mPFC distance representations selectively reflected individual performance improvements during the task. Testing for neural sensitivity to boundary-defined contextual changes, only the hippocampus flexibly represented abstract boundaries, which related to choice behavior. These findings suggest that abstract knowledge retrieval within dynamically changing contexts is facilitated by generalized mPFC and flexible hippocampal boundary representations.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.