英国牛津大学James C.R. Whittington研究组取得最新进展。他们提出Tolman-Eichenbaum机器（TEM）：通过海马结构中的泛化来统一空间和关系记忆。这一研究成果发表在2020年11月11日出版的国际学术期刊《细胞》上。

他们正式链接这些域，提供对海马在泛化中作用的机制理解，并提供许多内嗅和海马细胞类型的统一原则。他们建议内侧内嗅神经细胞形成描述结构认知基础，海马细胞将该基础与感觉表征联系起来。采用这些原理，他们介绍了TEM。学习后，TEM内嗅细胞表现出类似于明显定制空间响应的各种特性，例如网格、带、边界和对象矢量细胞。TEM海马细胞包括在环境之间重新映射的位置和界标细胞。

至关重要的是，TEM还与复杂的非空间任务中的经验记录表示相一致。TEM还产生了预测，即海马重映射并非如先前所认为的那样随机。相反，结构认知是跨环境保留的。他们在重新记录的同时记录的位置和网格单元中确认了这种结构转换。

研究人员表示，海马-肠胃系统对于空间和关系记忆任务很重要。

附：英文原文

Title: The Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine: Unifying Space and Relational Memory through Generalization in the Hippocampal Formation

Author: James C.R. Whittington, Timothy H. Muller, Shirley Mark, Guifen Chen, Caswell Barry, Neil Burgess, Timothy E.J. Behrens

Issue&Volume: 2020-11-11

Abstract: The hippocampal-entorhinal system is important for spatial and relational memory tasks. We formally link these domains, provide a mechanistic understanding of the hippocampal role in generalization, and offer unifying principles underlying many entorhinal and hippocampal cell types. We propose medial entorhinal cells form a basis describing structural knowledge, and hippocampal cells link this basis with sensory representations. Adopting these principles, we introduce the Tolman-Eichenbaum machine (TEM). After learning, TEM entorhinal cells display diverse properties resembling apparently bespoke spatial responses, such as grid, band, border, and object-vector cells. TEM hippocampal cells include place and landmark cells that remap between environments. Crucially, TEM also aligns with empirically recorded representations in complex non-spatial tasks. TEM also generates predictions that hippocampal remapping is not random as previously believed; rather, structural knowledge is preserved across environments. We confirm this structural transfer over remapping in simultaneously recorded place and grid cells.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.10.024

Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31388-X