How do the hippocampus and ventral striatum coordinate to tag locations with reward value, and what happens to place cells when something motivationally significant changes? Cyriel Pennartz reveals population-level state transitions in the rat brain.

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Cyriel Pennartz presents a detailed picture of how the rat brain's cognitive architecture processes spatial, motivational, and action-related information through the cortico-basal ganglia-hippocampal loops. He describes a continuous topographic organization where the dorsolateral striatum handles detailed sensorimotor associations and habits, the ventromedial striatum processes action-outcome relationships, and the ventral striatum integrates spatial and motivational cues. Rather than supporting a strict actor-critic d ...