A navigation system for our thoughts

Research report (imported) 2018 - Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Authors
Bellmund, Jacob L. S.; Doeller, Christian F.
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Leipzig, Abteilung Psychologie
DOI
Summary
How does the brain organize our experiences and our knowledge? A possible answer to this fundamental question: our brain’s navigation system forms so-called cognitive spaces in which we arrange our experience along feature dimensions, so that similar experiences are nearby in cognitive space. We propose this based on the combination of a wealth of findings about the functioning of place cells in the hippocampus and grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, which are central to spatial navigation. These cells also map cognitive spaces, thereby providing a spatial framework for human thinking.

For the full text, see the German version.

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