How Brain Organizes Information - Cognitive Maps

Mammalian brain generates flexible behavior generalizing across contexts—learning lasagna cooking in own kitchen enables efficiently navigating friend’s unfamiliar kitchen demonstrating remarkable ability transferring skills to novel situations never previously encountered.

American psychologist Edward Tolman conducted 1930s experiments leading coining term “cognitive map”—demonstrating animals possess mental map-like representations of surrounding space rather than merely learning stimulus-response associations.

Hippocampus represents workhorse of cognitive mapping containing place cells—hallmark neurons exhibiting spatially selective firing patterns responding preferentially when animal occupies specific locations within environment demonstrating neural substrate for Tolman’s theoretical cognitive maps.

Entorhinal cortex neurons upstream from hippocampus contain grid cells—remarkable neurons firing in periodic hexagonal patterns tiling entire environment providing metric coordinate system for spatial navigation discovered by Moser lab earning 2014 Nobel Prize.

Hippocampal-entorhinal system contains diverse spatially selective neurons beyond place and grid cells—including head direction cells, border cells, and speed cells each encoding specific spatial variables contributing to comprehensive cognitive map supporting flexible navigation.

Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine represents computational model explaining how brain transforms particular sensory experiences into abstract generalizable cognitive maps—bridging neural implementation (place cells, grid cells) with Tolman’s behavioral cognitive map theory through mathematical framework.

Hippocampal cognitive mapping mechanisms extend far beyond physical spatial navigation—same neural machinery supporting place cells and spatial memory also organizes abstract conceptual knowledge creating cognitive maps representing relationships between ideas, social hierarchies, skill dimensions, and semantic concepts.