Topological coding in hippocampus

Abstract

The proposed analysis of the currently available experimental results concerning the neural cell activity in the brain area known as hippocampus suggests a particular mechanism of spatial information and memory processing. Below it is argued that the spatial information available through the analysis of the hippocampal cell activity is predominantly of topological nature. It is pointed out that a direct topological analysis can produce a topological invariant based classification of the cell activity patterns and a complete topological description of animal's current environment. It also provides a full first order logical system for local topological reasoning about spatial structure and animal's navigational strategies.