# Jacob Bellmund and cognitive spaces

**URL:** <https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681>\
**Category:** Tangential Theories\
**Created:** [October 7, 2019, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681 "2019-10-07T11:39:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![weiglt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9de0a6/32.png) [@weiglt](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/weiglt)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 11:39am UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/1 "2019-10-07T11:39:31Z")

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Hi guys,

i recently read a few interesting papers from Jacob Bellmund, a german cognitive neuroscientist. He talks a lot about “Cognitive Spaces” and the navigation properties of grid and place cells in the Hippocampus and Entorhinal Cortex. I think a few papers could be very interessting to discuss because of the similaritis between the actual Numenta theory and his research.

For example here is an interessting review summary about navigating in cognitive spaces (like reference frames at numenta)

[cognitive spaces and navigation](https://doellerlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bellmund_et_al_2018_Science_Navigating-cognition.pdf)

He also has a webpage where you can read other puplications from Bellmund.

[More from Bellmund](https://www.jacobbellmund.com/)

I hope someone is interested in this topic or maybe has already read about this.

Best regardes

Tom

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**Author:** ![Falco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8797f3/32.png) [@Falco](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/Falco)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:06pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/2 "2019-10-07T20:06:49Z")

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I’ve only read the first page so far, but I have two remarks. Maybe I’ll find corrections to this further down.

- They talk about grid space in the hippocampus and the hippocampal-entorhinal region. Is there anywhere in other literature proof for grid cells in the neocortex?

- In the example they show vehicules classified on a 2D graph showing weight vs engine power, and so this suggests a continuous data distribution. (So for instance a minicar, a fourseater, an SUV and a truck are represented on a continuous line). From Numenta’s research, I would have thought that each related unit of information is represented as a binary set. (So in my previous example, I would have sets (minicar, fourseater), (minicar, SUV), (minicar, truck), (fourseater, SUV), (fourseater, truck) and (SUV, truck). And for each of these sets I would imagine a specific grid cell module. Doesn’t that make more sense?

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**Author:** ![Bitking](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.numenta.org/bitking/32/3099_2.png) [@Bitking](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/Bitking)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:17pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/3 "2019-10-07T20:17:32Z")

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> [@Falco](#):
>
> They talk about grid space in the hippocampus and the hippocampal-entorhinal region. Is there anywhere in other literature proof for grid cells in the neocortex?

> **[Organizing Conceptual Knowledge in Humans with a Grid-like Code](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5248972/)**
>
> It has been hypothesized that the brain organizes concepts into a mental map, allowing conceptual relationships to be navigated in a similar fashion to space. Grid cells use a hexagonally-symmetric code to organize spatial representations and are the...

_This grid-like signal is not unique to the entorhinal cortex, but can be measured during spatial navigation in prescribed parts of the medial frontal, medial parietal and lateral temporal cortices_

In other words, the hub areas of each lobe, I see the hex-grid codes as being the lingua-franca between the very different functions of the various lobes.

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**Author:** ![Falco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8797f3/32.png) [@Falco](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/Falco)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:26pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/4 "2019-10-07T20:26:39Z")

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> [@weiglt](#):
>
> Hi guys,

Welcome to the forum, by the way. Great to have you here. :-).

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**Author:** ![rhyolight](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/discourse.numenta.org/rhyolight/32/3922_2.png) [@rhyolight](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/rhyolight)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/5 "2019-10-07T20:27:13Z")

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Thanks for the links @weiglt. We at Numenta are aware of this excellent work. 🙂

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**Author:** ![weiglt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9de0a6/32.png) [@weiglt](https://discourse.numenta.org/u/weiglt)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:50pm UTC](https://discourse.numenta.org/t/jacob-bellmund-and-cognitive-spaces/6681/6 "2019-10-08T14:50:54Z")

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Thank you Falco 🙂 its a pleasure to read in this forum