Topic: cognitive map formation

Blindness significantly impacts the ability to acquire spatial information and build a cognitive map to stay oriented in the environment. Possible consequences include reduced autonomy, increased anxiety, social isolation, and overall decreased quality of life. It is therefore important to investigate non-visual cognitive map formation and its underlying neural mechanisms, which are still poorly understood. Therefore, we used fMRI to study the neural correlates of cognitive map formation through touch and audition in individuals with congenital and acquired blindness, and sighted individuals a

The hippocampus plays a key role in cognitive map formation. As an abstract model of the world, it has to balance the demands of accurate, yet general, predictions. Despite a long-lasting interest in hippocampal computations, the specific contributions of distinct hippocampal subregions remain debated. Evidence from rodents and humans suggests that subregion CA3 represents event-specific information, while subregion CA1 encodes more generalized information.The free-energy principle entails that neural networks with more generalized representations operate closer to criticality, where external