An Embodied Approach to Cognitive Systems: A Dynamic Neural Field Theory of Spatial Working Memory

Spatial cognition has typically been studied as isolated parts—spatial perception, spatial memory, spatial attention, and so on. Although this approach has had many successes, it has failed to produce a detailed understanding of how the piece-meal processes that make-up spatial behavior occur together in time in a complex, behaving organism with a densely connected, highly interactive neural system. In the present report, we describe a neurally-plausible theory of spatial working memory, the Dynamic Neural Field Theory (DNFT). The DNFT specifies how information activated in spatial working memory (SWM) changes from second-to-second relative to perceived reference frames and long-term memories of previously responded-to locations. Moreover, this theory captures key aspects of the development of this cognitive system.