Related papers: Learning Sparse Spatial Codes for Cognitive Mappin…
In the mammalian brain, many neuronal ensembles are involved in representing spatial structure of the environment. In particular, there exist cells that encode the animal's location and cells that encode head direction. A number of studies…
The human brain possesses the extraordinary capability to contextualize the information it receives from our environment. The entorhinal-hippocampal plays a critical role in this function, as it is deeply engaged in memory processing and…
Grid cells in the brain respond when an animal occupies a periodic lattice of "grid fields" during spatial navigation. The grid scale varies along the dorso-ventral axis of the entorhinal cortex. We propose that the grid system minimizes…
The spiking activity of principal cells in mammalian hippocampus encodes an internalized neuronal representation of the ambient space---a cognitive map. Once learned, such a map enables the animal to navigate a given environment for a long…
Robotic and animal mapping systems share many of the same objectives and challenges, but differ in one key aspect: where much of the research in robotic mapping has focused on solving the data association problem, the grid cell neurons…
How does the mind organize thoughts? The hippocampal-entorhinal complex is thought to support domain-general representation and processing of structural knowledge of arbitrary state, feature and concept spaces. In particular, it enables the…
While the sparse coding principle can successfully model information processing in sensory neural systems, it remains unclear how learning can be accomplished under neural architectural constraints. Feasible learning rules must rely solely…
The hippocampus has been associated with both spatial cognition and episodic memory formation, but integrating these functions into a unified framework remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate that forming discrete memories of visual…
In this paper, we focus on online representation learning in non-stationary environments which may require continuous adaptation of model architecture. We propose a novel online dictionary-learning (sparse-coding) framework which…
Sequential firing of hippocampal place cells is often attributed to sequential sensory drive along a trajectory, and has also been attributed to planning and other cognitive functions. Here, we propose a mechanistic and parsimonious…
Spatial navigation in mammals is based on building a mental representation of their environment---a cognitive map. However, both the nature of this cognitive map and its underpinning in neural structures and activity remains vague. A key…
Sparse sensor placement is a central challenge in the efficient characterization of complex systems when the cost of acquiring and processing data is high. Leading sparse sensing methods typically exploit either spatial or temporal…
Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex and place cells in the hippocampus together support spatial navigation. The two regions are reciprocally connected, and there is a chicken-and-egg problem for how both arise and reinforce each…
This study investigates the dynamics of non-spatial specializations in hippocampal place cells during exposure to novel environments. Hippocampal place cells, known for their role in spatial mapping, exhibit multi-modal responses to sensory…
The hippocampus is often attributed to episodic memory formation and storage in the mammalian brain; in particular, Alme et al. showed that hippocampal area CA3 forms statistically independent representations across a large number of…
In the mammalian hippocampus, the dentate gyrus (DG) is characterized by sparse and powerful unidirectional projections to CA3 pyramidal cells, the so-called mossy fibers. Mossy fiber synapses appear to duplicate, in terms of the…
A central idea in understanding brains and building artificial intelligence is that structure determines function. Yet, how the brain's complex structure arises from a limited set of genetic instructions remains a key question. The ultra…
The brain achieves stability and plasticity in a topologically complex, shifting world through Metric-Topology Factorization (MTF), separating discrete topological indexing for context selection from continuous metric condensation for local…
Grid cells play a principal role in enabling mammalian cognitive representations of ambient environments. The key property of these cells -- the regular arrangement of their firing fields -- is commonly viewed as means for establishing…
We develop of a line of work initiated by Curto and Itskov towards understanding the amount of information contained in the spike trains of hippocampal place cells via topology considerations. Previously, it was established that simply…