The hippocampus is not a geometric module: processing environment geometry during reorientation

The hippocampus has long been known to play a role in allocentric spatial coding, but its specific involvement in reorientation, or the recalibration of a disrupted egocentric spatial representation using allocentric spatial information, has received less attention. Initially, the cognitive literatu...

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Published in:Frontiers in human neuroscience Vol. 8; p. 596
Main Authors: Sutton, Jennifer E., Newcombe, Nora S.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 05.08.2014
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects:
allocentric representation
Animal cognition
Cognitive ability
geometric module
Geometry
Hippocampus
Knowledge
Nervous system
Neural coding
Neuroscience
spatial cognition
spatial reorientation
New York
United States > US
spatial cognition
geometric module
spatial reorientation
hippocampus
allocentric representation
ISSN:1662-5161, 1662-5161
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The hippocampus has long been known to play a role in allocentric spatial coding, but its specific involvement in reorientation, or the recalibration of a disrupted egocentric spatial representation using allocentric spatial information, has received less attention. Initially, the cognitive literature on reorientation focused on a "geometric module" sensitive to the shape formed by extended surfaces in the environment, and the neuroscience literature followed with proposals that particular MTL regions might be the seat of such a module. However, with behavioral evidence mounting that a modular cognitive architecture is unlikely, recent work has begun to directly address the issue of the neural underpinnings of reorientation. In this review, we describe the reorientation paradigm, initial proposals for the role of the MTL when people reorient, our recent work on the neural bases of reorientation, and finally, how this new information regarding neural mechanism helps to re-interpret and clarify the original behavioral reorientation data.
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Edited by: Veronique D. Bohbot, McGill University, Canada
Reviewed by: Bradley R. Sturz, Georgia Southern University, USA; Kyoko Konishi, McGill University, Canada
This article was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
ISSN:1662-5161
1662-5161
DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00596