NSF-IIS-1117303

Investigations of the Role of Dorsal versus Ventral Place and Grid Cells during Multi-Scale Spatial Navigation in Rats and Robots

NSF-IIS-1117303

Dates: 2011-2015

Principal Investigators

Alfredo Weitzenfeld (University of South Florida)
Jean-Marc Fellous (University of Arizona)

Main Participants

Martin Llofriu (University of South Florida)
Gonzalo Tejera (UDELAR)
Marco Contreras (University of Arizona)
Tatiana Pelc (University of Arizona)

Summary

This project investigates the dorso-ventral organization of place cells in the hippocampus and grid cells in the enthorinal cortex generating new experimental rat studies involving obstacle cluttered environments and developing a new computational model based on theses studies producing a multi-scale representation of space exploited by rats and robots for spatial navigation. The results of this work demonstrated the relevance of both dorsal and ventral place cell during rat and robot navigation. The computational model included the integration of place cells in the Hippocampus and grid cells in the Enthorinal Cortex in providing a multi-scale space representation exploited by rats and robots during navigation in goal-oriented tasks that involve learning.

Selected Bibliography

Llofriu, M., Tejera, G., Contreras, M., Pelc, T., Fellous, J.M., and Weitzenfeld, A., 2015, Multi-Scale Space Representation and Learning in Goal-Oriented Robot Navigation, Journal of Neural Network, Elsevier, doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2015.09.006.

Tejera, G., Llofriu, M., Barrera, A., and Weitzenfeld, A., 2015, A Spatial Cognition Model Integrating Grid Cells and Place Cells, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, IJCNN 2015, July 12-17, Killarney, Ireland.

Barrera, A., Tejera, G., Llofriu, M., and Weitzenfeld, A., 2015, Learning Spatial Localization: From Rat Studies to Computational Models of the Hippocampus, Journal of Spatial Cognition and Computation, Taylor-Francis, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 27-59.

Tejera, G., Barrera, A., Llofriu, M., and Weitzenfeld, A., 2013, Solving uncertainty during robot navigation by integrating grid cell and place cell firing based on rat spatial cognition studies, 16th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, ICAR 2013, Nov 25-29, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Tejera, G., Barrera, A., Fellous, J.M., Llofriu, M., and Weitzenfeld, A., 2013, Spatial Cognition: Robot Localization in Open Arenas based on Rat Studies, SPIE Conference on Multisensor, Multisource Information Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications, 29 April – 1 May, Baltimore, MD.

Weitzenfeld, A., Fellous, J.M., Barrera, A., and Tejera, G., 2012, Allothetic and idiothetic sensor fusion in rat-inspired robot localization, SPIE Conference on Multisensor, Multisource Information Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications, 23-27 April, Baltimore, MD.