1.  The role of pyramidal cells of the hippocampus<

In 1971, John O’Keefe at University College London made an amazing discovery about how the hippocampus processes sensory information.  He found that neurons in the hippocampus of the rat register information not about a single sensory modality — sight, sound, touch, or pain — but about the space surrounding the animal, a modality that depends on information from several senses.  He went on to show that the hippocampus of rats contains a representation — a map — of external space and that the units of that map are the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus, which processes information about place.  In fact the pattern of action potentials in these neurons is so distinctly related to a particular area of space that O’Keefe referred to them as “place cells.”  Soon after O’Keefe’s discovery, experiments with rodents showed that damage to the hippocampus severely compromises the animals’ ability to learn a task that relies on spatial information.  This finding indicated that the spatial map plays a central role in spatial cognition, our awareness of the environment around us. (pp. 281-282)

As soon as the metaphor of “a map” is used it brings with it entailments of a ‘map reader’. But, according to current neuroscience, there is no map reader in the brain, just synchronised electrical and chemical reactions from which behaviour emerges. Thus the ‘map’ Kandel refers to is not a map in the ordinary sense of the word, it’s a configuration of neurons whose pattern of firing contributes to the animal being able to navigate round its environment.

[That] the spatial memory of environments has a prominent internal representation in the hippocampus is evident even anatomically. Birds in which spatial memory is particularly important — those that store food at a large number of sites, for example — have a larger hippocampus than other birds.  London taxi drivers are another case in point.  Functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] revealed that after two years of [learning ‘The Knowledge’ of the] streets of London, taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus than other persons of the same age.  Indeed, the size of their hippocampus continues to increase with time on the job.  Moreover, brain-imaging studies show that the hippocampus is activated during imagined travel, when a taxi driver is asked to recall how to get to a particular destination. (pp. 305-306)

We believe that because much the same neurology is involved in imagining doing something and actually doing it, this explains one of the benefits of “making words physical”. David Grove used to emphasise the need to facilitate the client to shift from conceptual descriptions which have no coordinates to located symbolic representations. Then parts of the brain that know about space, movement and interactions in the physical world can be brought into service during the consideration of an abstract problem or desired outcome.

In all living creatures, from snails to people, knowledge of space is central to behavior.  As John O’Keefe notes, “Space plays a role in all our behaviour.  We live in it, move through it, explore it, defend it.”  Space is not only a critical sense but a fascinating one because unlike other senses space is not analyzed by a specialized sensory organ. How, then, is space represented in the brain? Because we do not have a sensory organ dedicated to space, the representation of space is a quintessentially cognitive sensibility: it is the binding problem writ large.  The brain must combine inputs from several different sensory modalities and then generate a complete internal representation that does not depend exclusively on any one input.
(pp. 307-308)

Interestingly, Kandel regards space as a “sense” that is “generated” by a synthesis of the more traditional senses.

The brain commonly represents information about space in many areas and many different ways, and the properties of each representation vary according to its purpose.  For example, for some representations of space the brain typically uses egocentric coordinates (centered on the receiver), encoding, for example, where a light is relative to the fovea or where an odor or touch comes from with respect to the body.  Egocentric representation is also used by people or monkeys for orientating to a sudden noise by making an eye movement to a particular location.  For other behaviors, like memory for space in the mouse or in people, it is necessary to encode the organism’s position relative to the outside world and the relationship of external objects to one another.  For these purposes the brain uses allocentric coordinates (centered on the world).  (p. 308)

Have you noticed how modern Sat Navs give you a choice to use either ego- or allo-centric coordinates. The “ego” is the car and the perspective is either ‘through the windscreen’ or a ‘birds-eye view’. In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), the use of egocentric coordinates is called ‘associated’ or ‘in-time’ and and allocentric coordinates are called ‘dissociated’ or ‘thru-time’.

From a Symbolic Modelling perspective it’s not quite so simple. Egocentric is actually own-body-centric. But because ‘a perceiver’ can move independent of the ego’s physical body, egocentric and allocentric coordinates can be used in a variety of combinations.  In fact, we doubt the sole conscious use of allocentric coordinates is possible. Even if a person is using an map “centred on the world” they still have to perceive the map from somewhere.  That’s why it makes a big difference when you turn a map upside down — the map is still using allocentric coordinates but your egocentric perspective on those coordinates has changed.

Egocentric coordinates are common in Clean Language work as a client’s metaphor landscape is usually centred on their body. However, once a landscape takes on an independence from its owner, it forms ‘the world’ upon which allocentric coordinates can be based. Then the landscape can remain fixed while attention moves around it using either type of coordinate.

Clean Space has the effect of turning a client’s egocentric coordinates into allocentric coordinates by “nailing their history to the floor so that it can be examined” as David Grove so grpaphically referred to it.

The spatial map discovered by O’Keefe differs radically from the egocentric sensory maps for touch and vision, because it is not dependent on any given sensory modality.  O’Keefe found that as an animal walks around an enclosure, some place cells fire action potentials only when that animal moves into a particular location, while others fire when the animal moves to another place.  The brain breaks down its surroundings into many small, overlapping areas, similar to a mosaic, each represented by activity in specific cells in the hippocampus. This internal map of space develops within minutes of the rat’s entrance into a new environment. (pp. 308-309)

An analogue in Clean Space is the breaking down of a complex abstract issue into several small areas, each represented by a verbal or nonverbal description of knowledge.  What is new (to us, at least) is the notion of “overlapping” spaces — something we want to explore on the day.

Unlike vision, touch, or smell, which are prewired and based on a priori [pre-existing] knowledge, the spatial map presents us with a new type of representation, one based on a combination of a priori knowledge and learning.  The general capability for forming spatial maps is built into mind, but the particular map is not. Unlike neurons in a sensory system, place cells are not switched on by sensory stimulation.  Their collective activity represents the location where the animal thinks it is. (p. 309)

In some ways “forming a spatial maps” seems parallel language acquisition. A baby comes into the world ready to acquire language but which particular language they learn depends on where and with whom they live.

And “where the animal thinks it is” is not a single thought, but multiple perceptions which somehow emerge in consciousness as an apparently unified representation. Even

when you know a visual illusion is fooling your neurons, it doesn’t stop you ‘seeing’ it as real. The two types of knowledge are processed in different ways and in different parts of the nervous system.