@article {68700,
	title = {Mental navigation and telekinesis with a hippocampal map-based brain-machine interface},
	journal = {bioRxiv},
	year = {2023},
	month = {2023 Apr 10},
	abstract = {<p>The hippocampus is critical for recollecting and imagining experiences. This is believed to involve voluntarily drawing from hippocampal memory representations of people, events, and places, including the hippocampus{\textquoteright} map-like representations of familiar environments. However, whether the representations in such {\textquotedblleft}cognitive maps{\textquotedblright} can be volitionally and selectively accessed is unknown. We developed a brain-machine interface to test if rats could control their hippocampal activity in a flexible, goal-directed, model-based manner. We show that rats can efficiently navigate or direct objects to arbitrary goal locations within a virtual reality arena solely by activating and sustaining appropriate hippocampal representations of remote places. This should provide insight into the mechanisms underlying episodic memory recall, mental simulation/planning, and imagination, and open up possibilities for high-level neural prosthetics utilizing hippocampal representations.</p>
},
	doi = {10.1101/2023.04.07.536077},
	url = {https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.07.536077},
	author = {Chongxi Lai and Shinsuke Tanaka and Timothy D. Harris and Albert K. Lee}
}
