Modelling the Cortical Columnar Organisation for Topological State-Space Representation, and Action Planning

Abstract. We present a neuromimetic navigation system modelling the colum-nar structure of the cortex to mediate spatial learning and action planning. The model has been validated on a spatial behavioural task, namely the Tolman & Honzik’s detour protocol, which allowed us to test the ability of the system to build a topological representation of the environment, and to use it to exhibit flexible goal-directed behaviour (i.e., to predict the outcome of alternative trajec-tories to avoid blocked pathways). First, it is shown that the model successfully reproduces the navigation performance of rodents in terms of goal-directed path selection. Second, we report on the neural response patterns characterising the learnt columnar space representation.