Can the brain use waves to solve planning problems?

TL;DR

This paper proposes a neural network model inspired by mammalian brain structures that uses wave-like activity to solve graph traversal problems, modeling cognitive maps for navigation and planning.

Contribution

It introduces a biologically plausible neural network model that employs wave propagation for solving planning tasks on cognitive maps.

Findings

Model aligns with empirical brain data

Wave patterns effectively guide pathfinding

Supports self-organized cognitive map formation

Abstract

A variety of behaviors like spatial navigation or bodily motion can be formulated as graph traversal problems through cognitive maps. We present a neural network model which can solve such tasks and is compatible with a broad range of empirical findings about the mammalian neocortex and hippocampus. The neurons and synaptic connections in the model represent structures that can result from self-organization into a cognitive map via Hebbian learning, i.e. into a graph in which each neuron represents a point of some abstract task-relevant manifold and the recurrent connections encode a distance metric on the manifold. Graph traversal problems are solved by wave-like activation patterns which travel through the recurrent network and guide a localized peak of activity onto a path from some starting position to a target state.