Journal
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES
Volume 36, Issue 5, Pages 523-543Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X12002476
Keywords
ethology; grid cells; head direction cells; hippocampus; navigation; neural encoding; place cells; spatial cognition; three-dimensional
Funding
- BBSRC [BB/J009792/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- MRC [G1100669] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/J009792/1] Funding Source: Medline
- Medical Research Council [G1100669] Funding Source: Medline
- Wellcome Trust [GR083540AIA] Funding Source: Medline
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/J009792/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Medical Research Council [G1100669] Funding Source: researchfish
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The study of spatial cognition has provided considerable insight into how animals (including humans) navigate on the horizontal plane. However, the real world is three-dimensional, having a complex topography including both horizontal and vertical features, which presents additional challenges for representation and navigation. The present article reviews the emerging behavioral and neurobiological literature on spatial cognition in non-horizontal environments. We suggest that three-dimensional spaces are represented in a quasiplanar fashion, with space in the plane of locomotion being computed separately and represented differently from space in the orthogonal axis - a representational structure we have termed bicoded. We argue that the mammalian spatial representation in surface-travelling animals comprises a mosaic of these locally planar fragments, rather than a fully integrated volumetric map. More generally, this may be true even for species that can move freely in all three dimensions, such as birds and fish. We outline the evidence supporting this view, together with the adaptive advantages of such a scheme.
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