Cognitive maps and novel inferences: a flexibility hierarchy

Cognitive maps come in all shapes and sizes. Here, we review the literature on cognitive maps and their role in novel inferences during decision making, focusing on the representations and computations in the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and ventral prefrontal cortex. We suggest that cognitive maps can be seen as balancing representational complexity and online computational demand. Recent evidence suggests the hippocampal formation and orbital frontal cortex both form and use cognitive maps along this spectrum, ranging from simple elementary associations to explicit maps of 2D relational spaces that leverage structural inference. These representations can be conceptualized in terms of the degrees of behavioral flexibility they afford.

Automated summary

Cognitive maps can be seen as balancing representational complexity and online computational demand. Recent evidence suggests that hippocampal formation and orbital frontal cortex both form and use cognitive maps along the spectrum, ranging from simple elementary associations to explicit maps that leverage structural inference in 2D relational spaces. These representations can be conceptualized in terms of the degrees of behavioral flexibility they afford.