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Zusammenfassung:
The processing of complex environments is greatly facilitated by the formation and use of concepts. Concepts represent combinations of features shared by similar entities and allow generalization from limited experience to novel situations. Recent research suggests that map-like codes in the hippocampal-entorhinal system can support concept learning by representing the relations between experiences along relevant feature dimensions. Here, we investigate if this map-like representation ('cognitive map') of concepts supports the retrieval of abstracted information to guide inference. In a novel behavioral paradigm, participants first were trained to categorize a set of visual exemplars based on the ratio of their two continuous features. Subsequently, they encountered exemplars that exhibited only one of the features and were instructed to complete the missing feature in a continuous fashion according to the category label. We found that behavioral response patterns during feature inference were attracted more towards the category prototype location than to the nearest experienced exemplar, suggesting the retrieval of an abstract representation. In an ongoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we examine to what degree the hippocampal system, in concert with visual areas, represents prototypes for feature inference. This project can help us to understand the relationship between cognitive maps and abstract category representations.
