ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience2024
The generative grammar of the brain: a critique of internally generated representations.
Review in Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Offline generative network reconfiguration guides insight-like accelerated learning by assimilation into schema in rats.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cognitive maps as a medium for thought.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Anti-NMDAR encephalitis impairs intrinsic hippocampal dynamics through neuronal hypercoupling, hub dominance, and aberrant ensembles.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Article
- Experience reorganizes content-specific memory traces in macaques.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Spaces and sequences in the hippocampus: a homological perspective.Journal of computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Brain function in language and associated networks in non- or minimally verbal children.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Preconfigured neuronal firing sequences in human brain organoids.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Optogenetic stimulation of memory-tagged neurons elicits endogenous patterns of neural activity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Ripple contributions to human memory: making the spiking content count.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Effective computations for hippocampal place cell phenomena in sparse untrained random networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Generative emergence of non-local representations in the hippocampus.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Emerging many-to-one weighted mapping in hippocampus-amygdala network underlies memory formation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Cognitive Graphs: Representational Substrates for Planning.Decision (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Experience of Euclidean geometry sculpts the development and dynamics of rodent hippocampal sequential cell assemblies.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Nested compressed co-representations of multiple sequential experiences during sleep.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Remapping revisited: how the hippocampus represents different spaces.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Consciousness and sleep.Neuron · 2024Review
- Face detection mechanisms: NatureFrontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
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Abstract
The past decade of progress in neurobiology has uncovered important organizational principles for network preconfiguration and neuronal selection that suggest a generative grammar exists in the brain. In this Perspective, I discuss the competence of the hippocampal neural network to generically express temporally compressed sequences of neuronal firing that represent novel experiences, which is envisioned as a form of generative neural syntax supporting a neurobiological perspective on brain function. I compare this neural competence with the hippocampal network performance that represents specific experiences with higher fidelity after new learning during replay, which is envisioned as a form of neural semantic that supports a complementary neuropsychological perspective. I also demonstrate how the syntax of network competence emerges a priori during early postnatal life and is followed by the later development of network performance that enables rapid encoding and memory consolidation. Thus, I propose that this generative grammar of the brain is essential for internally generated representations, which are crucial for the cognitive processes underlying learning and memory, prospection, and inference, which ultimately underlie our reason and representation of the world.
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