Professor Christian Doeller | Space for cognition

The fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience - what are the key coding principles of the brain enabling human thinking - still remains largely unanswered. Evidence from neurophysiology suggests that place and grid cells in the hippocampal-entorhinal system provide an internal spatial map, the brain’s SatNav - the most intriguing neuronal coding scheme outside the sensory system. Our framework is concerned with the key idea that this navigation system in the brain — potentially as a result of evolution — provides the blueprint for a neural metric underlying human cognition. Specifically, we propose that the brain maps experience in so-called ‘cognitive spaces’. In this talk, I will give an overview of our theoretical framework and experimental approach and will present show-case examples from fMRI, MEG and virtual reality experiments identifying cognitive coding mechanisms in the hippocampal-entorhinal system and beyond. Finally, I will sketch out our long-term cognitive neuroscience research program at the MPI, including key translations to information technology and the clinic.

Further reading:

Bellmund, J. L. S., Gärdenfors, P., Moser, E. I., & Doeller, C. F. (2018). Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking. Science, 362(6415), eaat6766.

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat6766

Poster