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Grid cell hexagonal patterns formed by fast self‐organized learning within entorhinal cortex
Author(s) -
Mhatre Himanshu,
Gorchetchnikov Anatoli,
Grossberg Stephen
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
hippocampus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.767
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1098-1063
pISSN - 1050-9631
DOI - 10.1002/hipo.20901
Subject(s) - hexagonal crystal system , grid , entorhinal cortex , path integration , hexagonal tiling , grid cell , hippocampal formation , computer science , self organizing map , neuroscience , cognitive map , spatial memory , hippocampus , artificial intelligence , pattern recognition (psychology) , artificial neural network , psychology , chemistry , mathematics , geometry , cognition , working memory , crystallography
Grid cells in the dorsal segment of the medial entorhinal cortex (dMEC) show remarkable hexagonal activity patterns, at multiple spatial scales, during spatial navigation. It has previously been shown how a self‐organizing map can convert firing patterns across entorhinal grid cells into hippocampal place cells that are capable of representing much larger spatial scales. Can grid cell firing fields also arise during navigation through learning within a self‐organizing map? This article describes a simple and general mathematical property of the trigonometry of spatial navigation which favors hexagonal patterns. The article also develops a neural model that can learn to exploit this trigonometric relationship. This GRIDSmap self‐organizing map model converts path integration signals into hexagonal grid cell patterns of multiple scales. GRIDSmap creates only grid cell firing patterns with the observed hexagonal structure, predicts how these hexagonal patterns can be learned from experience, and can process biologically plausible neural input and output signals during navigation. These results support an emerging unified computational framework based on a hierarchy of self‐organizing maps for explaining how entorhinal‐hippocampal interactions support spatial navigation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.