Organizing conceptual knowledge in humans with a gridlike code
Publication year
2016Number of pages
5 p.
Source
Science, 352, 6292, (2016), pp. 1464-1468ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
SW OZ DCC SMN
Journal title
Science
Volume
vol. 352
Issue
iss. 6292
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 1464
Page end
p. 1468
Subject
Action, intention, and motor control; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 2: Perception, Action and ControlAbstract
Grid cells are thought to provide the neuronal code that underlies spatial knowledge in the brain. Grid cells have mostly been studied in the context of path integration. However, recent theoretical studies have suggested that they may have a broader role in the organization of general knowledge. Constantinescu et al. investigated whether the neural representation of concepts follows a structure similar to the representation of space in the entorhinal cortex. Several brain regions, including the entorhinal cortex and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, showed gridlike neural representation of conceptual space. Science, this issue p. 1464It has been hypothesized that the brain organizes concepts into a mental map, allowing conceptual relationships to be navigated in a manner similar to that of space. Grid cells use a hexagonally symmetric code to organize spatial representations and are the likely source of a precise hexagonal symmetry in the functional magnetic resonance imaging signal. Humans navigating conceptual two-dimensional knowledge showed the same hexagonal signal in a set of brain regions markedly similar to those activated during spatial navigation. This gridlike signal is consistent across sessions acquired within an hour and more than a week apart. Our findings suggest that global relational codes may be used to organize nonspatial conceptual representations and that these codes may have a hexagonal gridlike pattern when conceptual knowledge is laid out in two continuous dimensions.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [245284]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [30345]
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