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Value representation in the monkey hippocampus

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.10.007Get rights and content

The hippocampus is thought to form cognitive maps across different domains of experience, including space and time. Recent work by Knudsen and Wallis identifies a map of abstract value space in the monkey hippocampus. We consider how these abstract variables might contribute to a comprehensive hippocampal representation of ongoing experience.

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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