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Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation

Variations in the geometry of the environment, such as the shape and size of an enclosure, have profound effects on navigational behavior and its neural underpinning. Here, we show that these effects arise as a consequence of a single, unifying principle: to navigate efficiently, the brain must main...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kang, Yul HR, Wolpert, Daniel M, Lengyel, Máté
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9915518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36778354
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.30.526278
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author Kang, Yul HR
Wolpert, Daniel M
Lengyel, Máté
author_facet Kang, Yul HR
Wolpert, Daniel M
Lengyel, Máté
author_sort Kang, Yul HR
collection PubMed
description Variations in the geometry of the environment, such as the shape and size of an enclosure, have profound effects on navigational behavior and its neural underpinning. Here, we show that these effects arise as a consequence of a single, unifying principle: to navigate efficiently, the brain must maintain and update the uncertainty about one’s location. We developed an image-computable Bayesian ideal observer model of navigation, continually combining noisy visual and self-motion inputs, and a neural encoding model optimized to represent the location uncertainty computed by the ideal observer. Through mathematical analysis and numerical simulations, we show that the ideal observer accounts for a diverse range of sometimes paradoxical distortions of human homing behavior in anisotropic and deformed environments, including ‘boundary tethering’, and its neural encoding accounts for distortions of rodent grid cell responses under identical environmental manipulations. Our results demonstrate that spatial uncertainty plays a key role in navigation.
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spelling pubmed-99155182023-02-11 Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation Kang, Yul HR Wolpert, Daniel M Lengyel, Máté bioRxiv Article Variations in the geometry of the environment, such as the shape and size of an enclosure, have profound effects on navigational behavior and its neural underpinning. Here, we show that these effects arise as a consequence of a single, unifying principle: to navigate efficiently, the brain must maintain and update the uncertainty about one’s location. We developed an image-computable Bayesian ideal observer model of navigation, continually combining noisy visual and self-motion inputs, and a neural encoding model optimized to represent the location uncertainty computed by the ideal observer. Through mathematical analysis and numerical simulations, we show that the ideal observer accounts for a diverse range of sometimes paradoxical distortions of human homing behavior in anisotropic and deformed environments, including ‘boundary tethering’, and its neural encoding accounts for distortions of rodent grid cell responses under identical environmental manipulations. Our results demonstrate that spatial uncertainty plays a key role in navigation. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9915518/ /pubmed/36778354 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.30.526278 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
spellingShingle Article
Kang, Yul HR
Wolpert, Daniel M
Lengyel, Máté
Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title_full Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title_fullStr Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title_full_unstemmed Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title_short Spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
title_sort spatial uncertainty and environmental geometry in navigation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9915518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36778354
http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.30.526278
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