Clone-structured graph representations enable flexible learning and vicarious evaluation of cognitive maps.

ABSTRACT: Cognitive maps are mental representations of spatial and conceptual relationships in an environment, and are critical for flexible behavior. To form these abstract maps, the hippocampus has to learn to separate or merge aliased observations appropriately in different contexts in a manner that enables generalization and efficient planning. Here we propose a specific higher-order graph structure, clone-structured cognitive graph (CSCG), which forms clones of an observation for different contexts as a representation that addresses these problems. CSCGs can be learned efficiently using a probabilistic sequence model that is inherently robust to uncertainty. We show that CSCGs can explain a variety of cognitive map phenomena such as discovering spatial relations from aliased sensations, transit

SUBMITTER: George D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8062558 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature