Modelling the cortical columnar organisation for topological state-space representation, and action planning

Abstract

We present a neuromimetic navigation system modelling the columnar structure of the cortex to mediate spatial learning and action planning. The model has been validated on a spatial behavioural task, namely the Tolman & Honzik's detour protocol, which allowed us to test the ability of the system to build a topological representation of the environment, and to use it to exhibit flexible goal-directed behaviour (i.e., to predict the outcome of alternative trajectories to avoid blocked pathways). First, it is shown that the model successfully reproduces the navigation performance of rodents in terms of goal-directed path selection. Second, we report on the neural response patterns characterising the learnt columnar space representation. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.