The Computational Brain

Topic Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recently it has become clear that the brain acts as a computational system but does not rely on binary codes, as seen with Turing-based computational systems. In this collection of papers, we will review the mechanisms by which information enters the nervous system, is stored and, later, retrieved. This does not rely simply on physiological action potentials because the action potential is made up of three components: the physiological action potential as described by Hodgkin and Hixley, the action potential pulse, and the computational action potential as described by Winlow and Johnson. Here, we will explore these mechanisms in more detail, including information storage in reverberatory loops in the neocortex. We invite submissions from a wide range of disciplines and encourage authors to share insights that can drive the computational brain.

Prof. Dr. William Winlow
Dr. Andrew Johnson
Topic Editors

Keywords

Participating Journals

Journal Name	Impact Factor	CiteScore	Launched Year	First Decision (median)	APC
Brain Sciences brainsci	2.8	5.6	2011	16.2 Days	CHF 2200	Submit
NeuroSci neurosci	2.0	-	2020	27.1 Days	CHF 1200	Submit
Applied Sciences applsci	2.5	5.5	2011	19.8 Days	CHF 2400	Submit
Mathematics mathematics	2.2	4.6	2013	18.4 Days	CHF 2600	Submit
Computation computation	1.9	4.1	2013	16.7 Days	CHF 1800	Submit

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All Brain Sciences NeuroSci Applied Sciences Mathematics Computation

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13 pages, 1245 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

An Experimental Study on the Formation of Spatial Cognitive Maps in Humans

by Otmar Bock

Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(13), 7234; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15137234 - 27 Jun 2025

Viewed by 257

Abstract

This study investigated how cognitive maps of the environment are formed. During learning trials, participants encoded the spatial locations of objects in a virtual maze either through simulated movement within the maze (first-person perspective) or by inspecting a schematic map (survey perspective). During [...] Read more.

This study investigated how cognitive maps of the environment are formed. During learning trials, participants encoded the spatial locations of objects in a virtual maze either through simulated movement within the maze (first-person perspective) or by inspecting a schematic map (survey perspective). During interleaved test trials, they indicated where the object were on a schematic map (survey perspective). Response accuracy, averaged across objects and participants, increased gradually across test trials. At the level of individual participants and objects, however, accuracy improved abruptly. Furthermore, response accuracy was unaffected by the number of encoded objects used. Notably, the speed of map formation and the absence of a set-size effect were comparable across the two encoding perspectives, despite the fact that first-person encoding required transformation into a survey perspective for testing. Unlike the speed, the accuracy was lower in the first-person perspective compared to the survey encoding perspective. These findings suggest that cognitive maps can be holistic rather than item-dependent representations that emerge in a locally abrupt fashion, regardless of the encoding perspective. In contrast to the emergence speed, map accuracy can be lower when the encoding perspective differs from the test perspective. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic The Computational Brain)

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