QBI Neuroscience Seminar: Spatial information fusion and ‘cognitive maps’

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 17 September 2014 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

Auditorium, level 7

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Speaker: Dr Allen Cheung
Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

Title:
Spatial information fusion and ‘cognitive maps’

Abstract:
‘Cognitive maps’ have been postulated to exist in various species of both vertebrates and invertebrates. For over six decades, the possibility of their existence continues to attract controversy. A weakness of many arguments is that while they may show sufficiency of ‘cognitive maps’ as explanatory models, they do not show necessity – that is, alternative explanations cannot be excluded. For instance, the ability to find shortcuts, homing from a novel location, or even the presence of place-specific firing of neurons, can all seemingly be explained without assuming a ‘cognitive map’.
Recently, we reframed the debate in terms of spatial information fusion. Based on our modelling of data from published rodent in vivo recording studies, we determined the limits of spatial localization performance without information fusion. We showed that prolonged hippocampal place field stability without vision necessarily requires the fusion of self-motion cues and a boundary representation in memory, satisfying most definitions of a ‘cognitive map’. New modelling results and implications of the spatial information fusion model are presented.