Topological Schemas of Memory Spaces

Hippocampal cognitive map---a neuronal representation of the spatial environment---is broadly discussed in the computational neuroscience literature for decades. More recent studies point out that hippocampus plays a major role in producing yet another cognitive framework that incorporates not only spatial, but also nonspatial memories---the memory space. However, unlike cognitive maps, memory spaces have been barely studied from a theoretical perspective. Here we propose an approach for modeling hippocampal memory spaces as an epiphenomenon of neuronal spiking activity. First, we suggest that the memory space may be viewed as a finite topological space---a hypothesis that allows treating both spatial and nonspatial aspects of hippocampal function on equal footing. We then model the topological properties of the memory space to demonstrate that this concept naturally incorporates the notion of a cognitive map. Lastly, we suggest a formal description of the memory consolidation process and point out a connection between the proposed model of the memory spaces to the so-called Morris' schemas, which emerge as the most compact representation of the memory structure.Comment: 24 pages, 8 Figures, 1 Suppl. Figur

Dendroidal Segal spaces and infinity-operads

We introduce the dendroidal analogs of the notions of complete Segal space and of Segal category, and construct two appropriate model categories for which each of these notions corresponds to the property of being fibrant. We prove that these two model categories are Quillen equivalent to each other, and to the monoidal model category for infinity-operads which we constructed in an earlier paper. By slicing over the monoidal unit objects in these model categories, we derive as immediate corollaries the known comparison results between Joyal's quasi-categories, Rezk's complete Segal spaces, and Segal categories.Comment: We replaced a wrong technical lemma by a correct proposition at the begining of Section 8. This does not affect the main results of this article (in particular, the end of Section 8 is unchanged). To appear in J. Topo