Hippocampal representations of alternative possibilities are flexibly generated to meet cognitive demands
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The cognitive ability to go beyond the present to consider alternative possibilities, including potential futures and counterfactual pasts, can support adaptive decision-making. Complex and changing real-world environments, however, have many possible alternatives. Whether and how the brain can select among them to represent alternatives that meet current cognitive needs remains unknown. We therefore examined neural representations of alternative spatial locations in the rat hippocampus during navigation in a complex patch-foraging environment with changing reward probabilities. We found representations of multiple alternatives along paths ahead and behind the animal, including in distant alternative patches. Critically, these representations showed distinct patterns of modulation across successive trials: alternative paths were represented proportionate to their evolving relative value and predicted subsequent decisions, whereas distant alternatives were prevalent during value updating. These results demonstrate that the brain modulates the generation of alternative possibilities to meet changing cognitive needs for adaptive behavior.
Source: Neuron
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $10,400
Awards: Hippocampal-cortical interactions supporting memory and value-guided decision-making, Investigating neural substrates of generalization from past experience, Differentiating reward seeking and loss avoidance with reference-dependent learning models, Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), G6341323622, G7260372895, G736435394, Value networks and hippocampal non-local representations
OpenAlex ID: W7214287266