There are currently two major theories about the role of the hippocampus, a distinctive structure in the back of the temporal lobe. One says that it stores a cognitive map, the other that it is a key locus for the temporary storage of episodic memories. A. David Redish takes the approach that understanding the role of the hippocampus in space will make it possible to address its role in less easily quantifiable areas such as memory. Basing his investigation on the study of rodent navigation--one of the primary domains for understanding information processing in the brain--he places the hippocampus in its anatomical context as part of a greater functional system. Redish draws on the extensive experimental and theoretical work of the last 100 years to paint a coherent picture of rodent navigation. His presentation encompasses multiple levels of analysis, from single-unit recording results to behavioral tasks to computational modeling. From this foundation, he proposes a novel understanding of the role of the hippocampus in rodents that can shed light on the role of the hippocampus in primates, explaining data from primate studies and human neurology. The book will be of interest not only to neuroscientists and psychologists, but also to researchers in computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

Cognitive mapping is a construct that encompasses those processes that enable people to acquire, code, store, recall, and manipulate information about the nature of their spatial environment. It refers to the attributes and relative locations of people and objects in the environment, and is an essential component in the adaptive process of spatial decision-making--such as finding a safe and quick route to from work, locating potential sites for a new house or business, and deciding where to travel on a vacation trip. Cognitive processes are not constant, but undergo change with age or development and use or learning. Image and Environment, now in paperback, is a pioneer study. It brings a new academic discipline to a wide audience. The volume is divided into six sections, which represent a comprehensive breakdown of cognitive mapping studies: "Theory"; "Cognitive Representations"; "Spatial Preferences"; "The Development of Spatial Cognition"; "Geographical and Spatial Orientation"; and "Cognitive Distance." Contributors include Edward Tolman, James Blaut, Stephen Kaplan, Terence Lee, Donald Appleyard, Peter Orleans, Thomas Saarinen, Kevin Cox, Georgia Zannaras, Peter Gould, Roger Hart, Gary Moore, Donald Griffin, Kevin Lynch, Ulf Lundberg, Ronald Lowrey, and Ronald Briggs.

Can capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new visions and artefacts that wrestle with the vastness, invisibility and complexity of the abstractions that rule our lives.

The metaphor of a "cognitive map" has attracted interest since the 1940s. Researchers from many fields have explored how humans process and use spatial information, why they make errors or not. This text brings together contributors from diverse fields to explore the

and processes which are exclusive to humans in their encoding, storing, decoding and retrieving spatial knowledge for various tasks. The authors present and discuss connectionist models of cognitive maps which are based on local representation, versus models which are based on distributed representation, as well as connectionist models concerning language and spatial relations. As is well known, Gibson's (1979) ecological approach suggests a view on cognition which is diametrically different from the classical main stream view: perception (and thus cognition) is direct, immediate and needs no internal information processing, and is thus essentially an external process of interaction between an organism and its external environment. The chapter by Harry Heft introduces J. J. Gibson's ecological approach and its implication to the construction of cognitive maps in general and to the issue of wayfinding in particular. According to Heft, main stream cognitive sciences are essentially Cartesian in nature and have not as yet internalized the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Gibson, in his ecological approach, has tried to do exactly this. The author introduces the basic terminology of the ecological approach and relates its various notions, in particular optic flow, nested hierarchy and affordances, to navigation and the way routes and places in the environment are learned.

This important work brings together international academics from a variety of disciplines to explore the topic of spatial cognition on a 'geographic' scale. It provides an overview of the historical origins of the subject, a description of current debates and suggests directions for future research.

In a world of chaotic alignments, traditional logic with its strict boundaries of truth and falsity has not imbued itself with the capability of reflecting the reality. Despite various attempts to reorient logic, there has remained an essential need for an alternative system that could infuse into itself a representation of the real world. Out of this need arose the system of Neutrosophy (the philosophy of neutralities, introduced by FLORENTIN SMARANDACHE), and its connected logic Neutrosophic Logic, which is a further generalization of the theory of Fuzzy Logic. In this book we study the concepts of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) and their Neutrosophic analogue, the Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps (NCMs). Fuzzy Cognitive Maps are fuzzy structures that strongly resemble neural networks, and they have powerful and far-reaching consequences as a mathematical tool for modeling complex systems. Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps are generalizations of FCMs, and their unique feature is the ability to handle indeterminacy in relations between two concepts thereby bringing greater sensitivity into the results. Some of the varied applications of FCMs and NCMs which has been explained by us, in this book, include: modeling of supervisory systems; design of hybrid models for complex systems; mobile robots and in intimate technology such as office plants; analysis of business performance assessment; formalism debate and legal rules; creating metabolic and regulatory network models; traffic and transportation problems; medical diagnostics; simulation of strategic planning process in intelligent systems; specific language impairment; web-mining inference application; child labor problem; industrial relations: between employer and employee, maximizing production and profit; decision support in intelligent intrusion detection system; hyper-knowledge representation in strategy formation; female infanticide; depression in terminally ill patients and finally, in the theory of community mobilization and women empowerment relative to the AIDS epidemic.