Spatial Cognition and Decision Model Based on Hippocampus-Prefrontal Cortex Interaction

Physiological experiments have shown that rats and other mammals can form neural representations of the spatial environment after exploring an unfamiliar environment, thus achieving goal-directed navigation. This spatial cognitive ability benefits from parallel processing of sensory information in rat brain networks, where the hippocampus structure is thought to be a key brain region for forming episodic memory and environmental cognition, while the prefrontal cortex receives reward information about spatiotemporal events and makes decisions. These two brain regions interact, ultimately producing goal-directed behavior and sequence planning. In order to simulate the cognitive and decision-making abilities of rats in a spatial environment, a model based on the interaction between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex is proposed. The model realizes goal-oriented navigation through reward propagation and forward replay mechanism. The experimental results show that the bionic navigation model can simulate the cognitive and decision-making ability of rats, which is consistent with the results of physiological studies. It provides a reference for understanding the operation mechanism of brain in cognitive process.