Activity design, histology and conduct. Credit score: Zong et al. (Nature Neuroscience, 2025).
As people and different animals navigate their environment and expertise various things, their mind creates so-called cognitive maps, that are inside representations of environments or duties. These psychological maps are finally generalized into schemas, frameworks that set up info acquired by way of expertise and might later information decision-making.
Numerous previous neuroscience and psychology research have tried to raised perceive the neural processes and mind areas that help the formation of those inside representations. Perception into these mechanisms may, in flip, make clear the underpinnings of studying and decision-making.
Two mind areas which have been discovered to play a task in forming inside representations of experiences are the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the hippocampus (HC). Amongst different features, the OFC helps reward-based studying and decision-making. On the similar time, the HC contributes to spatial navigation and the formation and retrieval of recollections.
Researchers on the Nationwide Institute of Drug Abuse in Baltimore not too long ago carried out a research to additional examine how these two mind areas help the formation of cognitive maps and schemas. Their findings, printed in Nature Neuroscience, counsel that through the formation of inside representations, the OFC and HC function in parallel, versus sequentially.
“Both the OFC and the hippocampus HC are implicated in the formation of cognitive maps and their generalization into schemas,” wrote Wenhui Zong, Jingfeng Zhou and their colleagues of their paper.
Histology. Credit score: Nature Neuroscience (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-025-01928-z
“Nevertheless, how these areas work together in supporting this perform stays unclear, with some proposals supporting a serial mannequin by which the OFC attracts on process representations created by the HC to extract key behavioral options and others suggesting a parallel mannequin by which each areas assemble representations that spotlight several types of info.
“In the present study, we tested between these two models by asking how schema correlates in rat OFC would be affected by inactivating the output of the HC, after learning and during transfer across problems.”
To evaluate the validity of those two beforehand proposed fashions of schema formation, the researchers carried out a sequence of experiments involving grownup rats. In these experiments, they recorded single-unit exercise within the OFC utilizing implanted electrons whereas the rats have been finishing duties they have been skilled on and once they have been making use of information they beforehand acquired to new issues.
Zong, Zhou and their colleagues additionally used experimental strategies to inactivate the ventral subiculum, a neural pathway by way of which info leaves the HC that’s recognized to venture onto the OFC. The findings they collected supplied proof supporting the speculation that the OFC and HC function in parallel to help the extraction of options which can be used to kind cognitive maps and schemas.
“We found that the prevalence and content of schema correlates were unaffected by inactivating one major HC output area, the ventral subiculum, after learning, whereas inactivation during transfer accelerated their formation,” wrote Zong, Zhou and their colleagues. “These results favor the proposal that the OFC and HC operate in parallel to extract different features defining cognitive maps and schemas.”
The outcomes of this current research contribute to the understanding of how the brains of rats, and doubtlessly additionally people, create inside representations that information future decision-making, permitting them to use information acquired previously to new issues. Sooner or later, the current work by Zong, Zhou and their colleagues may pave the way in which for additional analysis to validate their observations or exploring them in higher element.
Extra info:
Wenhui Zong et al, Hippocampal output suppresses orbitofrontal cortex schema cell formation, Nature Neuroscience (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-025-01928-z.
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