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Review
. 2015 Jun;25(6):690-6.
doi: 10.1002/hipo.22448. Epub 2015 May 2.

A limited positioning system for memory

Affiliations
Review

A limited positioning system for memory

Matthew Shapiro. Hippocampus. 2015 Jun.

Abstract

The 2014 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is an enormous triumph for John O'Keefe and May-Britt and Edvard Moser and an historic event for cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. Neuronal representations decoded from action potentials form a mechanistic bridge between brain and mind and demonstrate the continuity of psychology with biology and physical science. The cognitive map theory powered an ongoing, international research program inspired by Hebb (The Organization of Behavior. New York, NY: Wiley) that showed the way toward linking specific patterns of neuronal activity to high level representation and processing. The prize celebrates a path that led from fundamental, philosophical questions about psychological space to enduring, scientific facts: place, head direction, grid, and boundary fields in the hippocampus, presubiculum, entorhinal cortex, and other brain circuits provide a cellular basis for spatial behavior, learning, and memory. By awarding this prize, the Nobel committee affirmed neuroethology and comparative psychology, marked the end of a chapter in one debate about the existence of animal cognition, and recognized cognitive neurophysiology. The "inner GPS" in the brain" demonstrates "a cellular basis for higher cognitive function." Animals represent, process, and use information defined by abstract relationships among items (O'Keefe and Conway,) to guide flexible, goal-directed actions. Beyond raising the ontological status of "animal mind," the committee agreed that abstract mental representations can be investigated rigorously by recording single unit activity in the brain of behaving animals.

Keywords: cognitive mapping; comparative neuropsychology; episodic memory; hippocampus.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
A four-dimensional memory space. The Venn diagram is superimposed on a tetrahedron to emphasize the prediction that cells coding location, distance, and direction should exist for each dimension. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Strategy coding by CA1 ensembles. An ensemble of 21 CA1 cells distinguish cue- and place-approach tasks during identical journeys. (A) Place approach: the neurons are ordered from left to right by firing rate and position from the beginning of the start arm to the goal (top to bottom, vertical axis). The start arm extends from 0 to 58 cm. The colors show standardized firing rates (Z scores). Cell 1 is solid green because it never fired in the place task. (B) Cue approach: the same neurons, order, and color scheme as in (A). (C) Place-cue difference plot: color scheme is different in firing rate between the tasks (Hz). [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]

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