Grid cells provide a compelling example of a link between cellular activity and an abstract and difficult to define concept like space. Accordingly, a representational perspective on grid coding argues that neural grid coding underlies a fundamentally spatial metric. Recently, some theoretical proposals have suggested extending such a framework to nonspatial cognition as well, such as category learning. Here, we provide a critique of the frequently employed assumption of an isomorphism between patterns of neural activity (e.g., grid cells), mental representation, and behavior (e.g., navigation). Specifically, we question the strict isomorphism between these three levels and suggest that human spatial navigation is perhaps best characterized by a wide variety of both metric and nonmetric strategies. We offer an alternative perspective on how grid coding might relate to human spatial navigation, arguing that grid coding is part of a much larger conglomeration of neural activity patterns that dynamically tune to accomplish specific behavioral outputs.

中文翻译：

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网格编码、空间表示和导航：我们应该假设同构吗？


网格细胞提供了一个令人信服的例子，说明细胞活动与抽象且难以定义的概念（如空间）之间的联系。因此，网格编码的代表性观点认为神经网格编码是基本空间度量的基础。最近，一些理论建议建议将这样的框架扩展到非空间认知，例如类别学习。在这里，我们对神经活动模式（例如网格细胞）、心理表征和行为（例如导航）之间的同构假设进行了批评。具体来说，我们质疑这三个层次之间的严格同构，并认为人类空间导航的最佳特征可能是各种度量和非度量策略。我们提供了关于网格编码如何与人类空间导航相关的另一种观点，认为网格编码是更大的神经活动模式集合的一部分，这些神经活动模式可以动态调整以完成特定的行为输出。