Neuroscience exploration - Can We Build an Artificial Hippocampus?

To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit http://brilliant.org/ArtemKirsanov/ The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription. ===== My name is Artem, I'm a neuroscience PhD student at Harvard University. 🌎 Website and Social links: https://kirsanov.ai/ 📥 "Receptive Field" neuro-newsletter: https://artemkirsanov.substack.com/ ✨ Support me on Patreon to get access to Discord community: https://patreon.com/artemkirsanov ===== In this video we discuss the Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine – a computational model of a hippocampal formation, which unifies memory and spatial navigation under a common framework. 🕒 OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 01:13 - Motivation: Agents, Rewards and Actions 03:17 - Prediction Problem 05:58 - Model architecture 06:46 - Position module 07:40 - Memory module 08:57 - Running TEM step-by-step 11:37 - Model performance 13:33 - Cellular representations 17:48 - TEM predicts remapping laws 19:37 - Recap and Acknowledgments 20:53 - TEM as a Transformer network 21:55 - Brilliant 23:19 - Outro 📚 FURTHER READING & REFERENCES: 1. Whittington, J. C. R. et al. The Tolman-Eichenbaum Machine: Unifying Space and Relational Memory through Generalization in the Hippocampal Formation. Cell 183, 1249-1263.e23 (2020). 2. Whittington, J. C. R., Warren, J. & Behrens, T. E. J. Relating transformers to models and neural representations of the hippocampal formation. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/2112.04035 (2022). 3. Whittington, J. C. R., McCaffary, D., Bakermans, J. J. W. & Behrens, T. E. J. How to build a cognitive map. Nat Neurosci 25, 1257–1272 (2022). ===== Special thanks to Crimson Ghoul for providing English subtitles! Icons by biorender.com and freepik.com Brain 3D models were created with Blender software using publicly available BrainGlobe atlases (https://brainglobe.info/atlas-api) Animations were made using open-source Python packages Matplotlib and RatInABox ( https://github.com/TomGeorge1234/RatInABox ) Rat free 3D model: https://skfb.ly/oEq7y This video was sponsored by Brilliant ===== *Disclaimer:* This channel is my personal project. The views and content expressed here are my own and are separate from my research role at Harvard University. #neuroscience #AI #biotechnology _Description remastered: February 2026. Links & Bio updated; original context preserved._