The place cells of the hippocampus create distinct maps of each context, a process known as hippocampal remapping.  Past work has asked which environmental features determine which map is used, but no consistent answer has been reached. However, this approach has ignored the relevance of context identification as part of a larger learning process. 

In order to address the question of which features determine which map is used, we must explicitly raise some of the complexities that make the context learning problem an intrinsically difficult problem.  The brain does not know a priori what features of the environment will be relevant, nor does it have direct access to context identity labels.  Fundamentally, this corresponds to an unsupervised clustering problem, where the brain receives a stream of experiences and must cluster them in a data-driven manner. 

Our results emphasize that learning plays a large role in hippocampal remapping.  Formalizing context learning as a clustering problems allows us to capture a range of experimental results that have not yet been explained by a single theoretical framework.  This model also provides novel predictions including the effect of variability in training as well as providing novel analyses including characterizing animal-to-animal variability. 

Our brain continuously decodes the complex visual scenes unwinding in front of us: both the nature of material entities, such as individuals and objects, and their immaterial interactions. I will briefly talk about individual recognition in monkeys and next turn to interaction processing. Interactions are fundamental in that they reveal hidden properties of intentional agents, such as their thoughts and feelings and of objects, such as their mass or material. Where and how interaction analyses are implemented in the brain is unknown. Using whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging in macaque monkeys, we discovered a network centered in the medial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex that is exclusively engaged in social interaction analysis. Two additional networks, a parieto-premotor and a temporal one, exhibited both social and physical interaction preference, which, in the temporal lobe, mapped onto a fine-grain pattern of object, body, and face selectivity. Extent and location of a dedicated system for social interaction analysis in monkeys suggest that this function is an evolutionary forerunner of human mind-reading capabilities.