Abstract
The hippocampus has been firmly established as playing a crucial role in flexible navigation. Recent evidence suggests that dorsal striatum may also play an important role in such goal-directed behaviour in both rodents and humans. Across recent studies, activity in the caudate nucleus has been linked to forward planning and adaptation to changes in the environment. In particular, several human neuroimaging studies have found the caudate nucleus tracks information traditionally associated with that by the hippocampus. In this brief review, we examine this evidence and argue the dorsal striatum encodes the transition structure of the environment during flexible, goal-directed behaviour. We highlight that future research should explore the following: (1) Investigate neural responses during spatial navigation via a biophysically plausible framework explained by reinforcement learning models and (2) Observe the interaction between cortical areas and both the dorsal striatum and hippocampus during flexible navigation.
Highlights
Flexible adaptation in response to unexpected changes in the environment is a central challenge in navigation. Tolman et al (1946) adeptly illustrated this in his seminal work exploring the capacity of rodents to accommodate detours and adopt shortcuts in complex mazes
This work led to the proposal of the cognitive map hypothesis for flexible behaviour, by which the brain constructs an internal representation of the environment to support navigation (Tolman, 1948)
Central to this proposal is the existence of ‘place cells’ in the hippocampus that show spatially localised activity patterns linked to boundaries and landmarks in an environment (O’Keefe and Dostrovsky, 1971)
Summary
Flexible adaptation in response to unexpected changes in the environment is a central challenge in navigation. Tolman et al (1946) adeptly illustrated this in his seminal work exploring the capacity of rodents to accommodate detours and adopt shortcuts in complex mazes. Keywords Spatial navigation, dorsal striatum, hippocampus, flexible behaviour, goals, reinforcement learning, wayfinding
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