Prospective representation of navigational goals in the human hippocampus

Abstract

Mental representation of the future is a fundamental component of goal-directed behavior. Computational and animal models highlight prospective spatial coding in the hippocampus, mediated by interactions with the prefrontal cortex, as a putative mechanism for simulating future events. Using whole-brain high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi-voxel pattern classification, we tested whether the human hippocampus and interrelated cortical structures support prospective representation of navigational goals. Results demonstrated that hippocampal activity patterns code for future goals to which participants subsequently navigate, as well as for intervening locations along the route, consistent with trajectory-specific simulation. The strength of hippocampal goal representations covaried with goal-related coding in the prefrontal, medial temporal, and medial parietal cortex. Collectively, these data indicate that a hippocampal-cortical network supports prospective simulation of navigational events during goal-directed planning.

Dynamic updating of hippocampal object representations reflects new conceptual knowledge

“…Posterior HPC has been shown to exhibit distinct representations for individual episodes, whereas anterior HPC codes for integrated representations that generalize across related episodes (8,22,38,54). The current study builds on these observations to show that anterior HPC representations are not limited to spatial contexts (19,38,55,56) or overlap between related episodes (8), but can also integrate attention-weighted object information across extended learning experiences. Our connectivity findings speculatively support the view that PFC interacts with HPC when concepts are updated to reflect changes in the learning context.…”

“…First, HPC rapidly learns (13), an ability important for updating conceptual representations in the face of changing goals. Second, HPC has also been shown to activate representations that are goal relevant (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). A critical open question is how the same experiences come to be represented differently in neural terms as a function of changing conceptual knowledge.…”

Learning Naturalistic Temporal Structure in the Posterior Medial Network

“…Indeed, the hippocampus exhibits anticipatory signals that can impact goal-directed behavior (e.g., Bornstein and Daw, 2013; Brown et al, 2016; Hindy et al, 2016; Johnson and Redish, 2007; Pfeiffer and Foster, 2013; for review, see Buckner, 2010; Redish, 2016). Given the increased coupling of posterior medial regions with the hippocampus, one speculation is that this may be contributing to hippocampal prediction.…”

Episodic future thinking: mechanisms and functions

“…These findings have been extended to humans by using fMRI to scan participants while they perform a virtual navigation task: multi-voxel pattern analysis revealed that hippocampal activity patterns were linked to prospective navigational goals as participants planned their routes, and that the strength of these goal-related representations was associated with goal-related activity in other core network regions (105). Related work has shown, intriguingly, that imagined spatial navigation is accompanied by fMRI signals in entorhinal cortex that display features characteristic of grid cells (106).…”