Topic: cognitive strategies

Generic neural networks optimized for task performance are often successful in predicting neural activity in animals. However, neural mechanisms dictate not only the task performance but also how a particular task is solved. Can we deduce mechanisms from cognitive strategies? To find out, we asked humans and monkeys to perform a challenging task in which they steered to a remembered goal location by integrating self-motion in a virtual environment lacking position cues. Although this task requires only mentally tracking one’s position relative to the goal, subjects physically tracked this late