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Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations

In general, strategies for spatial navigation could employ one of two spatial reference frames: egocentric or allocentric. Notwithstanding intuitive explanations, it remains unclear however under what circumstances one strategy is chosen over another, and how neural representations should be related...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya, Cheng, Sen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9648855/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36315587
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010320
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author Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya
Cheng, Sen
author_facet Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya
Cheng, Sen
author_sort Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya
collection PubMed
description In general, strategies for spatial navigation could employ one of two spatial reference frames: egocentric or allocentric. Notwithstanding intuitive explanations, it remains unclear however under what circumstances one strategy is chosen over another, and how neural representations should be related to the chosen strategy. Here, we first use a deep reinforcement learning model to investigate whether a particular type of navigation strategy arises spontaneously during spatial learning without imposing a bias onto the model. We then examine the spatial representations that emerge in the network to support navigation. To this end, we study two tasks that are ethologically valid for mammals—guidance, where the agent has to navigate to a goal location fixed in allocentric space, and aiming, where the agent navigates to a visible cue. We find that when both navigation strategies are available to the agent, the solutions it develops for guidance and aiming are heavily biased towards the allocentric or the egocentric strategy, respectively, as one might expect. Nevertheless, the agent can learn both tasks using either type of strategy. Furthermore, we find that place-cell-like allocentric representations emerge preferentially in guidance when using an allocentric strategy, whereas egocentric vector representations emerge when using an egocentric strategy in aiming. We thus find that alongside the type of navigational strategy, the nature of the task plays a pivotal role in the type of spatial representations that emerge.
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spelling pubmed-96488552022-11-15 Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya Cheng, Sen PLoS Comput Biol Research Article In general, strategies for spatial navigation could employ one of two spatial reference frames: egocentric or allocentric. Notwithstanding intuitive explanations, it remains unclear however under what circumstances one strategy is chosen over another, and how neural representations should be related to the chosen strategy. Here, we first use a deep reinforcement learning model to investigate whether a particular type of navigation strategy arises spontaneously during spatial learning without imposing a bias onto the model. We then examine the spatial representations that emerge in the network to support navigation. To this end, we study two tasks that are ethologically valid for mammals—guidance, where the agent has to navigate to a goal location fixed in allocentric space, and aiming, where the agent navigates to a visible cue. We find that when both navigation strategies are available to the agent, the solutions it develops for guidance and aiming are heavily biased towards the allocentric or the egocentric strategy, respectively, as one might expect. Nevertheless, the agent can learn both tasks using either type of strategy. Furthermore, we find that place-cell-like allocentric representations emerge preferentially in guidance when using an allocentric strategy, whereas egocentric vector representations emerge when using an egocentric strategy in aiming. We thus find that alongside the type of navigational strategy, the nature of the task plays a pivotal role in the type of spatial representations that emerge. Public Library of Science 2022-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9648855/ /pubmed/36315587 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010320 Text en © 2022 Vijayabaskaran, Cheng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vijayabaskaran, Sandhiya
Cheng, Sen
Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title_full Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title_fullStr Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title_full_unstemmed Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title_short Navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
title_sort navigation task and action space drive the emergence of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9648855/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36315587
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010320
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