The Hippocampus As A Cognitive Map

There are currently two major theories about the role of the hippocampus, a distinctive structure in the back of the temporal lobe. One says that it stores a cognitive map, the other that it is a key locus for the temporary storage of episodic memories. A. David Redish takes the approach that understanding the role of the hippocampus in space will make it possible to address its role in less easily quantifiable areas such as memory. Basing his investigation on the study of rodent navigation--one of the primary domains for understanding information processing in the brain--he places the hippocampus in its anatomical context as part of a greater functional system. Redish draws on the extensive experimental and theoretical work of the last 100 years to paint a coherent picture of rodent navigation. His presentation encompasses multiple levels of analysis, from single-unit recording results to behavioral tasks to computational modeling. From this foundation, he proposes a novel understanding of the role of the hippocampus in rodents that can shed light on the role of the hippocampus in primates, explaining data from primate studies and human neurology. The book will be of interest not only to neuroscientists and psychologists, but also to researchers in computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

"The more we know,concludes volume editor Reginald Golledge, "about how humans or other species can navigate, wayfind, sense, record and use spatial information, the more effective will be the building of future guidance systems, and the more natural it will be for human beings to understand and control those systems."

Data from neuropsychological and animal research suggest that the hippocampus plays a pivotal role in two relatively different areas: active navigation, as well as episodic learning and memory. Recent studies have attempted to bridge these disparate accounts of hippocampal function by emphasizing the role that hippocampal place cells may play in processing the spatial contextual information that defines situations in which learned behaviors occur. A number of established laboratories are currently offering complementary interpretations of place fields, and this book will present the first common platform for them. Bringing together research from behavioral, genetic, physiological, computational, and neural-systems perspectives will provide a thorough understanding of the extent to which studying place-field properties has informed our understanding of the neural mechanisms of hippocampus-dependent memory. Hippocampal Place Fields: Relevance to Learning and Memory will serve as a valuable reference for everyone interested in hippocampal function.

and processes which are exclusive to humans in their encoding, storing, decoding and retrieving spatial knowledge for various tasks. The authors present and discuss connectionist models of cognitive maps which are based on local representation, versus models which are based on distributed representation, as well as connectionist models concerning language and spatial relations. As is well known, Gibson's (1979) ecological approach suggests a view on cognition which is diametrically different from the classical main stream view: perception (and thus cognition) is direct, immediate and needs no internal information processing, and is thus essentially an external process of interaction between an organism and its external environment. The chapter by Harry Heft introduces J. J. Gibson's ecological approach and its implication to the construction of cognitive maps in general and to the issue of wayfinding in particular. According to Heft, main stream cognitive sciences are essentially Cartesian in nature and have not as yet internalized the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Gibson, in his ecological approach, has tried to do exactly this. The author introduces the basic terminology of the ecological approach and relates its various notions, in particular optic flow, nested hierarchy and affordances, to navigation and the way routes and places in the environment are learned.

The hippocampus has long been considered a critical substrate in the neurobiology, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience of memory. Over the past few decades, a number of ground-breaking theoretical and methodological advances have radically enhanced our understanding of the structure and function of the hippocampus and revolutionized the neuroscientific study of memory. Cutting across disciplines and approaches, these advances offer novel insights into the molecular and cellular structure and physiology of the hippocampus, the role of hippocampus in the formation, (re)consolidation, enhancement, and retrieval of memory across time and development, and permit investigators to address questions about how the hippocampus interacts, functionally and anatomically, with other neural systems in service of memory. In addition, recent investigations also suggest that the mechanistic properties and functional processing features of the hippocampus permit broader contributions to cognition, beyond memory, to the domains of attention, decision-making, language, social cognition, and a variety of other capacities that are critical for flexible cognition and behavior. These advances have profound implications for the neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience of hippocampus dependent cognition and for the numerous psychiatric and neurological diseases and disorders for which hippocampal pathology is a hallmark such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. The goal of this book is to bring together in a single source an integrated review of these advances providing state of the art treatment on the structure and function of the hippocampus. Contributors will examine the hippocampus from a variety of levels (from cells to systems) using a wide range of methods (from neurobiological approaches in non-human animals to neuroimaging and neuropsychological work in humans).

The hippocampus is one of a group of remarkable structures embedded within the brain's medial temporal lobe. Long known to be important for memory, it has been a prime focus of neuroscience research for many years. The Hippocampus Book promises to facilitate developments in the field in a major way by bringing together, for the first time, contributions by leading international scientists knowledgeable about hippocampal anatomy, physiology, and function. This authoritative volume offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date account of what the hippocampus does, how it does it, and what happens when things go wrong. At the same time, it illustrates how research focusing on this single brain structure has revealed principles of wider generality for the whole brain in relation to anatomical connectivity, synaptic plasticity, cognition and behavior, and computational algorithms. Well-organized in its presentation of both theory and experimental data, this peerless work vividly illustrates the astonishing progress that has been made in unraveling the workings of the brain. The Hippocampus Book is destined to take a central place on every neuroscientist's bookshelf.