Hypotheses about how parahippocampal and hippocampal structures may be involved in spatial navigation tasks are implemented in a model of a virtual rat navigating through a virtual environment in search of a food reward. The model incorporates theta oscillations to separate encoding from retrieval and yields testable predictions about the phase relations of spiking activity to theta oscillations in different parts of the hippocampal formation at various stages of the behavioral task. See paper for more and details.
Model Type: Connectionist Network
Model Concept(s): Activity Patterns; Oscillations; Simplified Models; Synaptic Plasticity; Long-term Synaptic Plasticity; Place cell/field; Spatial Navigation
Simulation Environment: Catacomb (web link to model)
Implementer(s): Cannon, Robert C [Robert.C.Cannon at gmail.com]; Koene, Randal A [randalk at bu.edu]; Hasselmo, Michael E [hasselmo at bu.edu]
References:
Cannon RC, Hasselmo ME, Koene RA. (2003). From biophysics to behavior: Catacomb2 and the design of biologically-plausible models for spatial navigation. Neuroinformatics. 1 [PubMed]