Much is known about how environmental space is represented in the mammalian brain. 'Place cells' in the hippocampus of both rats and humans reliably fire in particular places within a familiar environment. By contrast, we know little about how the spaces defined by objects, like the surface of a tabletop, are represented. I'll propose a model for generating object-centered spatial knowledge using self organising maps, extending recent work by Martin Takac and Ali Knott here at Otago. The model learns locations on surfaces by simulating exploring them by hand, proposing an analogue of the environmental place system and reflecting the convergence of motor and spatial processing found in the parietal brain areas.
Last modified: Wednesday, 14-Sep-2016 08:43:44 NZST
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