Abstract
That familiarity should gate learning is a neurobiological and computational commonplace, and has been particularly investigated in the context of the hippocampus. We show its critical importance in continuous attractor models, using the formation of place fields in hippocampal area CA3 as an example. Without it, biased sampling of places in an environment, coming from purely random exploration, leads to degenerate attractors and prevents the formation of place fields. Conversely, appropriate use of familiarity information during learning can counteract the sampling bias, resulting in a normal place cell representation.
