Oscillators and servomechanisms in orientation and navigation, and sometimes in cognition

Chen, Ken

doi:10.1098/rspb.2022.0237

Cited by 21 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 100 publications

(179 reference statements)

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“…My attempts at finding mechanisms for the pigeon’s small-scale spatial cognition, much of the program in collaboration with Marcia Spetch (Cheng 1988 , 1989 , 1990 ; Cheng and Sherry 1992 ; Spetch et al 1996 , 1997 ; review: Cheng et al 2006 ), did examine and describe some videotaped behaviour of the birds (Cheng 1988 ). This bit of focus on actions led to the idea of servomechanisms in navigation (Cheng 1995 ), and I still think of navigation and orientation mostly in servomechanistic terms (Cheng 2022b ; Freas and Cheng 2022 ). The Wikipedia page on servomechanisms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servomechanism , accessed January 2022) describes them as engineered devices designed to maintain some variable based on negative feedback.…”

Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With this background on servomechanisms, it should not be difficult to think of major navigational systems as servomechanistic in nature (Cheng 1995 , 2012 , 2022b ; Freas and Cheng 2022 ). Take two major strategies in an ant’s navigational toolkit, path integration and view-based navigation.…”

Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…

Fig. 3 Illustrations of a servomechanism showing the proportions of space devoted to brain processes and actions from ( A ) Cheng ( 1995 ), in which the comparison process taking place in the brain took most of the space, and from ( B ) Cheng ( 2022b ). The relative sizes of the boxes in this figure correspond to the relative sizes used in the previously published figures.…”

Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My focus then, and to this day, was on the mechanistic bases that allow organisms to do what they do. In recent times (Cheng 2022b ; Freas and Cheng 2022 ), I examined, in reading literature although not in empirical research, cognitive processes in life forms beyond animals. This explains why the term “organisms” will be used frequently in this essay.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From representations to servomechanisms to oscillators: my journey in the study of cognition

Chen

2022

Anim Cogn

Self Cite

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The study of comparative cognition bloomed in the 1970s and 1980s with a focus on representations in the heads of animals that undergird what animals can achieve. Even in action-packed domains such as navigation and spatial cognition, a focus on representations prevailed. In the 1990s, I suggested a conception of navigation in terms of navigational servomechanisms. A servomechanism can be said to aim for a goal, with deviations from the goal-directed path registering as an error. The error drives action to reduce the error in a negative-feedback loop. This loop, with the action reducing the very signal that drove action in the first place, is key to defining a servomechanism. Even though actions are crucial components of servomechanisms, my focus was on the representational component that encodes signals and evaluates errors. Recently, I modified and amplified this view in claiming that, in navigation, servomechanisms operate by modulating the performance of oscillators, endogenous units that produce periodic action. The pattern is found from bacteria travelling micrometres to sea turtles travelling thousands of kilometres. This pattern of servomechanisms working with oscillators is found in other realms of cognition and of life. I think that oscillators provide an effective way to organise an organism’s own activities while servomechanisms provide an effective means to adjust to the organism’s environment, including that of its own body.

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Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…

Section: Servomechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From representations to servomechanisms to oscillators: my journey in the study of cognition

Chen

2022

Anim Cogn

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“…Observations of spatial tuning during locomotion and of replay during periods of quiet rest (e.g., grooming and reward consumption) have made these behavioral epochs the focus of most work studying how hippocampal processing supports spatial memory 8–13 . Yet, animals of all types perform behaviors wherein they stop locomotion and, distinct from quiet rest, actively sample the surrounding environment 14 . In mammals, including rats and mice, this can appear as rearing onto their hind legs 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hippocampal inactivation during rearing on hind legs impairs spatial memory

Layfield¹,

Sidell²,

Blankenberger³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Spatial memory requires an intact hippocampus. Hippocampal function during epochs of locomotion and quiet rest (e.g., grooming and reward consumption) have been the target of extensive study. However, during navigation rats frequently rear up on to their hind legs and the importance of hippocampal activity during these periods of attentive sampling for spatial memory is unknown. To address this, we tested the necessity of dorsal hippocampal activity during rearing epochs in the study phase of a delayed win-shift task for memory performance in the subsequent test phase. Hippocampal activity was manipulated with closed-loop, bilateral, optogenetic inactivation. Spatial memory accuracy was significantly and selectively reduced when the dorsal hippocampus was inactivated during rearing epochs at encoding. These data show that hippocampal activity during periods of rearing can be important for spatial memory, revealing a novel link between hippocampal function during epochs of rearing and spatial memory.

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Scanning behaviour in ants: an interplay between random-rate processes and oscillators

et al. 2023

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At the start of a journey home or to a foraging site, ants often stop, interrupting their forward movement, turn on the spot a number of times, and fixate in different directions. These scanning bouts are thought to provide visual information for choosing a path to travel. The temporal organization of such scanning bouts has implications about the neural organisation of navigational behaviour. We examined (1) the temporal distribution of the start of such scanning bouts and (2) the dynamics of saccadic body turns and fixations that compose a scanning bout in Australian desert ants, Melophorus bagoti, as they came out of a walled channel onto open field at the start of their homeward journey. Ants were caught when they neared their nest and displaced to different locations to start their journey home again. The observed parameters were mostly similar across familiar and unfamiliar locations. The turning angles of saccadic body turning to the right or left showed some stereotypy, with a peak just under 45°. The direction of such saccades appears to be determined by a slow oscillatory process as described in other insect species. In timing, however, both the distribution of inter-scanning-bout intervals and individual fixation durations showed exponential characteristics, the signature for a random-rate or Poisson process. Neurobiologically, therefore, there must be some process that switches behaviour (starting a scanning bout or ending a fixation) with equal probability at every moment in time. We discuss how chance events in the ant brain that occasionally reach a threshold for triggering such behaviours can generate the results.

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Oscillators and servomechanisms in orientation and navigation, and sometimes in cognition

Cited by 21 publications

References 100 publications

From representations to servomechanisms to oscillators: my journey in the study of cognition

From representations to servomechanisms to oscillators: my journey in the study of cognition

Hippocampal inactivation during rearing on hind legs impairs spatial memory

Scanning behaviour in ants: an interplay between random-rate processes and oscillators

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