Rodent Neural Activity Has a Geometric Structure (forbes.com)

TheAlexKnapp writes: In a recent paper (abstract), a team used techniques from computational topology to look at the neural activity in the rat hippocampus as it solved a maze. Mathematician Kevin Knudson explains the findings: "This is the first time geometric structure has been found intrinsically in neural data. Certainly such a structure is to be expected since the rat's place cells keep track of the geometry of the environment, but this result is confirmation that it can be detected using only the pattern of correlations among the neurons. And it suggests that such geometric structure is a property of the underlying place cell network and not a result of the spatial structure of the input cells."

Comments

Re:Explain this please:

[roman_mir]

I read TFA and the way I understand it is that neurons in the hippocampus connect with each other in a way that resembles or projects a map of the environment into the connected structure. So basically a picture or map of the environment is formed in the brain. A mouse is released into a maze, the maze is a geometrical structure that mouse follows to try and escape. As the mouse follows the structure the picture of the maze is mapped into the brain and stays there for some time (unknown?) The mouse knows where it is in the maze because of that shape of the connected neurons that forms in its hippocampus.

So we probably do the same. The size of the brain (number of neurons and connections between them) likely limits how much of the space around us we can map into it. It would be interesting to find out what is the size of the maze supposed to be before a mouse can no longer figure out where it is? Also what if the maze is dynamically changing (corridors are closed and others are opened after the mouse passes them), how does the brain remap this information, does it add new information without removing old data?

What other meta-data is stored in the brain beside the map of it, how about colours, smells, environment (sharp corners, sticky floors, puddles of water, etc.) How much can a mouse be pushed before it gives up?