Hippocampal and prefrontal processing of network topology to simulate the future

Topological networks lie at the heart of our cities and social milieu. However, it remains unclear how and when the brain processes topological structures to guide future behaviour during everyday life. Using fMRI in humans and a simulation of London (UK), here we show that, specifically when new st...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 14652 - 11
Main Authors: Javadi, Amir-Homayoun, Emo, Beatrix, Howard, Lorelei R., Zisch, Fiona E., Yu, Yichao, Knight, Rebecca, Pinelo Silva, Joao, Spiers, Hugo J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 21.03.2017
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
631/378/1595/1554
631/378/1595/3922
Adult
Brain - diagnostic imaging
Brain - physiology
Decision trees
Female
Functional Neuroimaging
Hippocampus - diagnostic imaging
Hippocampus - physiology
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Hypotheses
London
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
multidisciplinary
Planning
Prefrontal Cortex - diagnostic imaging
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Simulation
Spatial Behavior - physiology
Spatial Navigation - physiology
Spatial Processing - physiology
Topology
University colleges
Young Adult
United Kingdom > UK
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
Online Access:Get full text
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Description
Summary:Topological networks lie at the heart of our cities and social milieu. However, it remains unclear how and when the brain processes topological structures to guide future behaviour during everyday life. Using fMRI in humans and a simulation of London (UK), here we show that, specifically when new streets are entered during navigation of the city, right posterior hippocampal activity indexes the change in the number of local topological connections available for future travel and right anterior hippocampal activity reflects global properties of the street entered. When forced detours require re-planning of the route to the goal, bilateral inferior lateral prefrontal activity scales with the planning demands of a breadth-first search of future paths. These results help shape models of how hippocampal and prefrontal regions support navigation, planning and future simulation. The hippocampus is known to support navigation, but how it processes possible paths to aid navigation is unknown. Here Javadi et al . show that entering streets drives hippocampal activity corresponding to the number of future paths, and that prefrontal activity corresponds to path-planning demands.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms14652