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No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation

In many animals the ability to navigate over long distances is an important prerequisite for foraging. For example, it is widely accepted that desert ants and honey bees, but also mammals, use path integration for finding the way back to their home site. It is however a matter of a long standing deb...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cruse, Holk, Wehner, Rüdiger
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060166/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21445233
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002009
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author Cruse, Holk
Wehner, Rüdiger
author_facet Cruse, Holk
Wehner, Rüdiger
author_sort Cruse, Holk
collection PubMed
description In many animals the ability to navigate over long distances is an important prerequisite for foraging. For example, it is widely accepted that desert ants and honey bees, but also mammals, use path integration for finding the way back to their home site. It is however a matter of a long standing debate whether animals in addition are able to acquire and use so called cognitive maps. Such a ‘map’, a global spatial representation of the foraging area, is generally assumed to allow the animal to find shortcuts between two sites although the direct connection has never been travelled before. Using the artificial neural network approach, here we develop an artificial memory system which is based on path integration and various landmark guidance mechanisms (a bank of individual and independent landmark-defined memory elements). Activation of the individual memory elements depends on a separate motivation network and an, in part, asymmetrical lateral inhibition network. The information concerning the absolute position of the agent is present, but resides in a separate memory that can only be used by the path integration subsystem to control the behaviour, but cannot be used for computational purposes with other memory elements of the system. Thus, in this simulation there is no neural basis of a cognitive map. Nevertheless, an agent controlled by this network is able to accomplish various navigational tasks known from ants and bees and often discussed as being dependent on a cognitive map. For example, map-like behaviour as observed in honey bees arises as an emergent property from a decentralized system. This behaviour thus can be explained without referring to the assumption that a cognitive map, a coherent representation of foraging space, must exist. We hypothesize that the proposed network essentially resides in the mushroom bodies of the insect brain.
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spelling pubmed-30601662011-03-28 No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation Cruse, Holk Wehner, Rüdiger PLoS Comput Biol Research Article In many animals the ability to navigate over long distances is an important prerequisite for foraging. For example, it is widely accepted that desert ants and honey bees, but also mammals, use path integration for finding the way back to their home site. It is however a matter of a long standing debate whether animals in addition are able to acquire and use so called cognitive maps. Such a ‘map’, a global spatial representation of the foraging area, is generally assumed to allow the animal to find shortcuts between two sites although the direct connection has never been travelled before. Using the artificial neural network approach, here we develop an artificial memory system which is based on path integration and various landmark guidance mechanisms (a bank of individual and independent landmark-defined memory elements). Activation of the individual memory elements depends on a separate motivation network and an, in part, asymmetrical lateral inhibition network. The information concerning the absolute position of the agent is present, but resides in a separate memory that can only be used by the path integration subsystem to control the behaviour, but cannot be used for computational purposes with other memory elements of the system. Thus, in this simulation there is no neural basis of a cognitive map. Nevertheless, an agent controlled by this network is able to accomplish various navigational tasks known from ants and bees and often discussed as being dependent on a cognitive map. For example, map-like behaviour as observed in honey bees arises as an emergent property from a decentralized system. This behaviour thus can be explained without referring to the assumption that a cognitive map, a coherent representation of foraging space, must exist. We hypothesize that the proposed network essentially resides in the mushroom bodies of the insect brain. Public Library of Science 2011-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3060166/ /pubmed/21445233 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002009 Text en Cruse, Wehner. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Cruse, Holk
Wehner, Rüdiger
No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title_full No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title_fullStr No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title_full_unstemmed No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title_short No Need for a Cognitive Map: Decentralized Memory for Insect Navigation
title_sort no need for a cognitive map: decentralized memory for insect navigation
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060166/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21445233
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002009
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