Neural network approaches to cognitive mapping

Abstract

There are many different approaches to cognitive mapping, arising mostly from the different philosophical backgrounds of the researchers involved. Our own research into the problem of how best to build a representation for one's experience of one's spatial environment is motivated by the need to understand how the human mind works. Neural network approaches to cognitive mapping are as varied as their non-neural network counterparts and range from models which use the network to model the physiology of the brain to models which are merely an abstraction of some aspect of cognitive mapping behaviour. We review four neural network approaches to cognitive mapping with the view to determining what insights they can bring to the cognitive mapping process.