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Parallel cognitive maps for multiple knowledge structures in the hippocampal formation
Xiaochen Y Zheng1, Martin N Hebart2,3, Filip Grill1,4
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, 6525 EN, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|January 11, 2024
Summary
The brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Neuroimaging
Background:
- The hippocampal-entorhinal system is crucial for forming cognitive maps representing spatial and relational information.
- Objects can possess multiple, diverse relational characteristics simultaneously.
- It remains unclear how the hippocampal formation integrates stimuli within multiple relational structures acquired over different timescales.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether the hippocampal formation creates a single conjunctive map or parallel maps for different relational structures.
- To determine how the brain represents objects embedded in multiple, distinct relational frameworks.
Main Methods:
- Reanalysis of human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.
- Application of fMRI adaptation analysis to assess representational similarity.
- Examination of data from Garvert et al. (2017) concerning a learned transition structure.
Main Results:
- Representational similarity in the hippocampus decreased with increasing semantic distance between objects.
- Both transition and semantic structure representations were found in the hippocampal formation.
- The semantic map was located in posterior hippocampal regions, distinct from the transition structure map.
Conclusions:
- The hippocampal-entorhinal system likely forms parallel cognitive maps for diverse relational structures.
- Different stimulus dimensions are represented in anatomically distinct maps within the hippocampal formation.
- This supports a model of parallel processing for relational information in the brain.
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