Perspective Chapter: Role of the Hippocampal Formation in Navigation from a Simultaneous Location and Mapping Perspective

Abstract

The research of the brain has led to many questions, with most of them still not having a definitive answer. One of those questions is about how the brain acts when we navigate a new space. Inside the Temporal Lobe’s Hippocampal structure, specific types of neurons and neuronal structures are responsible to identify spatial elements. To recognize spaces, these cells require data, which is obtained from the subject’s senses. It is important to understand how these features are captured, processed, encoded and how the Hippocampus, and its neighboring elements, use the information to help in the navigation and mapping of a place. A specific type of neurons seems to support an animals location and spatial mapping, on other areas of research, discrete global grid systems are used to increase the independence of the autonomous vehicles, allowing the indexing of assets across the globe by partitioning the earth into grids that take into account the heterogeneity of the scales of the associated geospatial data. In this context, the main objective of this chapter is to make an analysis about the biological and technical aspects of navigation by establishing a bridge between the Hippocampus and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) methods.