Discerning Topological Maps from Real Hippocampal Firings

📄 Project Abstract

Place Cells are neurons which have been known to be implicated in spatial navigation and awareness since their discovery in 1971 [6]. Years of studies have corroborated the theory that they encode information about speci_x000C_c physical places, and their _x000C_ring patterns in lab rats relative to the rodent's location demonstrates a remarkable link between brain signals and physical observations. At the centre of this project is an investigation on the plausibility of reconstructing space from time. In less abstract terms, we question how much information about the outside world we can extract from neuron signals in the brain alone. Speci_x000C_cally: could it be possible to deduce the topological characteristics of a lab rat's environment using only Place Cell _x000C_ring data recorded from that rat's hippocampus while it was exploring a maze? Previous work (Prichard 2010) [13] has demonstrated the plausibility of achieving this on simulated data. Here we produce a preliminary syst...