Spatial navigation and causal analysis in a brain-based device having detailed cortical-hippocampal interactions
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 22:25authored byJeffrey L Krichmar, Anil SethAnil Seth, Douglas A Nitz, Jason G Fleischer, Gerald M Edelman
We describe Darwin X, a physical device that interacts with a real environment, whose behavior is guided by a simulated nervous system incorporating aspects of the detailed anatomy and physiology of the hippocampus and its surrounding regions. This brain-based device integrates cues from its environment and solves a spatial memory task. The responses of simulated neuronal units in the hippocampal areas during its exploratory behavior are comparable to place cells in the rodent hippocampus. These place units emerged by integrating visual and self-movement cues during exploration with only minimal assumptions about the environmental inputs into the model. To identify different functional hippocampal pathways and their influence on behavior, we employed a time series analysis that distinguishes causal interactions within and between simulated hippocampal and neocortical regions while the device is engaged in a spatial memory task. Our analysis identified different functional pathways within the neural simulation and prompts novel predictions about the influence of the perforant path, the tri-synaptic loop and hippocampal-cortical interactions on place cell activity and behavior during navigation. Moreover, this causal time series analysis may be useful in analyzing networks in general, neural or otherwise.