Cognitive Map

Cognitive map is the structured neural representation of relational information — spatial, conceptual, or abstract — that an organism uses to navigate, plan, and infer. First demonstrated in rats by O'Keefe and Dostrovsky through the discovery of place cells, the cognitive map hypothesis has since expanded beyond geography to include the "conceptual spaces" that govern reasoning in domains from ethics to mathematics.

The critical insight is that cognitive maps are not mere memory stores. They are active inferential structures — what representational systems theorists call "surrogate reasoning" devices. A creature with a cognitive map does not just remember where it has been; it can plan where it has never gone. This capacity for counterfactual navigation, whether through physical space or conceptual space, is the hallmark of genuine mapping in any substrate.