How Your Brain Organizes Information
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My name is Artem, I'm a neuroscience PhD student at Harvard University.
🌎 Website and Social links: https://kirsanov.ai/
📥 "Receptive Field" neuro-newsletter: https://artemkirsanov.substack.com/
✨ Support me on Patreon to get access to Discord community: / artemkirsanov
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In this video we talk about cognitive maps – internal models of outside world that the brain to generate flexible behavior that is generalized across contexts.
🕒 OUTLINE:
00:00 - Introduction
02:08 - Edward Tolman
03:48 - Zoo of neurons in hippocampal formation
06:40 - Non spatial mapping
08:21 - Graph formalism
12:21 - Latent spaces
17:22 - Factorized representations
21:51 - Summary
24:47 - Brilliant
26:19 - Outro
📚 FURTHER READING & REFERENCES:
1. Behrens, T. E. J. et al. What Is a Cognitive Map? Organizing Knowledge for Flexible Behavior. Neuron 100, 490–509 (2018).
2. Constantinescu, A. O., O’Reilly, J. X. & Behrens, T. E. J. Organizing conceptual knowledge in humans with a gridlike code. Science 352, 1464–1468 (2016).
3. Aronov, D., Nevers, R. & Tank, D. W. Mapping of a non-spatial dimension by the hippocampal–entorhinal circuit. Nature 543, 719–722 (2017).
4. Whittington, J. C. R., McCaffary, D., Bakermans, J. J. W. & Behrens, T. E. J. How to build a cognitive map. Nat Neurosci 25, 1257–1272 (2022).
5. Whittington, J., Muller, T., Mark, S., Barry, C. & Behrens, T. Generalisation of structural knowledge in the hippocampal-entorhinal system.
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Special thanks to Crimson Ghoul for providing English subtitles!
Icons by biorender.com and freepik.com
Brain 3D models were created with Blender software using publicly available BrainGlobe atlases (https://brainglobe.info/atlas-api)
This video was sponsored by Brilliant
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Disclaimer: This channel is my personal project. The views and content expressed here are my own and are separate from my research role at Harvard University.
#neuroscience #cognitivemaps #brain
Description remastered: February 2026. Links & Bio updated; original context preserved.