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Cognitive representations of spatial location

Jeffery, KJ; (2018) Cognitive representations of spatial location. Brain and Neuroscience Advances , 2 pp. 1-5. 10.1177/2398212818810686. Green open access

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Abstract

Spatial memory has fascinated psychologists ever since the discipline began, but a series of findings beginning in the middle of last century propelled its study into the domain of neuroscience and helped bring about the cognitive revolution in psychology. Starting with the discovery that the hippocampus plays a central role in memory, particularly spatial memory, studies of the mammalian hippocampus and related regions over the latter half of the century slowly uncovered an extensive neural system involved in processing place, head direction, objects, speed and other spatially informative parameters. Meanwhile, the concurrent discovery of hippocampal synaptic plasticity allowed theoreticians and experimentalists to collaborate in linking spatial perception and memory, and genetic techniques developed towards the end of the century opened the door to circuit dissections of these processes. Building on these discoveries, spatial cognition and episodic memory may be the first cognitive competences understood across all levels from molecules to behaviour.

Type: Article
Title: Cognitive representations of spatial location
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1177/2398212818810686
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2398212818810686
Language: English
Additional information: Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords: Cognitive maps, hippocampus, neurobiology, path integration, rat, reference frames, spatial memory
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10093943
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