Sequence Learning and the Role of the Hippocampus in Rodent Navigation

By David J. Foster, James J. Knierim. 2012

111 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The hippocampus has long been associated with navigation and spatial representations, but it has been difficult to link directly the neurophysiological correlates of hippocampal place cells with navigational planning and action. In recent years, large-scale population recordings of place cells have revealed that spatial sequences are stored and activated in ways that may support navigational strategies. Plasticity mechanisms allow the hippocampus to store learned sequences of locations that may allow predictions of future locations based on past experience. These sequences can also be activated during navigational behavior in ways that may allow the animal to learn trajectories toward goals. Task-dependent alterations in place cell firing patterns may reflect the operation of the hippocampus in associating locations with navigationally relevant decision variables.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Replay in Deep Learning: Current Approaches and Missing Biological Elements (2021, positive): “Experimental and theoretical studies have identified partial replay as a potential mechanism for exploring possible routes or facilitating goal-directed navigation (Foster & Knierim, 2012; Pfeiffer & Foster, 2013).”
The Role of Hippocampal Replay in Memory and Planning (2018, background): “In turn, reverse replay during behaviour has been implicated as a possible solution to the temporal credit assignment problem in reinforcement learning [55,70].”
Replay Comes of Age. (2017, methodology): “A solution is to use states that capture both location and trial memory, and evidence suggests hippocampal cells develop similar representations (Foster & Knierim 2012, Frank et al. 2000, Wood et al. 2000).”
The successor representation in human reinforcement learning (2016, methodology): “The hippocampus is implicated in the representation of both spatial 41 and non-spatial 42,43 cognitive maps 12 (consistent with Tolman’s classic notion 8 ), predictive representations of prospective goals 46 , as well as associative 47 , sequential 48 and statistical learning 12,49 .”