Live Demo: Spiking ratSLAM: Rat hippocampus cells in spiking neural hardware

Abstract

We will demonstrate a model of rat hippocampus place, grid and Border cells implemented with the SpiNNaker spiking neural hardware, configured using the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) package Nengo, hosted on a mobile robot. These cells are used by rats for odometry, to locate landmarks and for navigation. Nengo provides a dynamical systems approach to configure large scale spiking neural hardware, while SpiNNaker allows these large scale networks to be realized in real-time and to control small mobile platforms. The hippocampus model implemented in this work uses Spatial Envelope Synthesis (SES), which produces place, Border and grid cells by interfering velocity tuned neural oscillators. Such cells have been recorded in the rat's hippocampus and are used during navigation.