Trends in Cognitive Sciences
SpotlightValue representation in the monkey hippocampus
Section snippets
Ongoing experience and flexible use of cognitive maps
Value place cells might serve as part of a universal positional code that captures value relationships between stimuli. Alternatively, the hippocampus might encode value relationships because of their intrinsic temporal contiguity in the behavioral task [8]. In this framework, neurons in the hippocampus respond to value in the same way as they respond to any other variable relevant to the ongoing experience [3,4]. Consistent with this proposal, value place cells initially remapped with context
Concluding remarks
Knudsen and Wallis extend our understanding of reward as an abstract and relational parameter that is represented in the hippocampus even when monkeys passively experience transitions in value space. In rodents, active movement is a critical factor in generating place cells, which fail to emerge or become very large during passive motion [10]. As the authors acknowledge, an interesting question for future studies would be to determine whether the activity of value place cells is fundamentally
Declaration of interests
None declared by authors.
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