Episodic, Semantic, Pavlovian, and Procedural Cognitive Maps

Abstract

Current theories of planning associate the hippocampus with a cognitive map, a theoretical construct used to predict the consequences of actions. This formulation is problematic for two reasons: First, cognitive maps are traditionally conceptualized to generalize over individual episodes, which conflicts with evidence associating the hippocampus with episodic memory, and second, it fails to explain seemingly non-hippocampal forms of planning. Here we propose a novel theoretical framework that resolves these issues: each long-term memory system is a cognitive map, predicting consequences of actions based on its unique computational properties. It follows that hippocampal maps are episode-based and that semantic, procedural, and Pavlovian memories each implement a specialized map. We present evidence for each type of map from neuropsychology, neuroimaging and animal electrophysiology studies.