The hippocampus is thought to encode a “cognitive map,” a structural organization of knowledge about relationships in the world. Place cells, spatially selective hippocampal neurons that have been extensively studied in rodents, are one component of this map, describing the relative position of environmental features. However, whether this map extends to abstract, cognitive information remains unknown. Using the relative reward value of cues to define continuous “paths” through an abstract value space, we show that single neurons in primate hippocampus encode this space through value place fields, much like a rodent’s place neurons encode paths through physical space. Value place fields remapped when cues changed but also became increasingly correlated across contexts, allowing maps to become generalized. Our findings help explain the critical contribution of the hippocampus to value-based decision-making, providing a mechanism by which knowledge of relationships in the world can be incorporated into reward predictions for guiding decisions.

海马体被认为编码了一张“认知地图”，这是一种关于世界关系的知识结构组织。位置细胞是在啮齿动物中广泛研究的空间选择性海马神经元，是该地图的一个组成部分，描述了环境特征的相对位置。然而，这张地图是否延伸到抽象的认知信息仍然未知。使用线索的相对奖励值来定义通过抽象值空间的连续“路径”，我们表明灵长类动物海马体中的单个神经元通过值位置场对这个空间进行编码，就像啮齿动物的位置神经元通过物理空间编码路径一样。当提示发生变化时，值位置字段被重新映射，但在上下文中也变得越来越相关，从而使地图变得普遍。