Kyle Jasmin, Max Bullock, Frederic Dick, Roger Atkins, Roberto Bottini, Federica Sigismondi, Adam Tierney. Spatial coding supports auditory conceptual navigation. bioRxiv 2025.02.04.636440; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.04.636440

Abstract
“Grid cells in human entorhinal cortex encode spatial layouts for real-world navigation, yet their role in conceptual navigation remains unclear. Here we show that mentally transforming tones within a purely auditory pitch-duration space engages spatial circuits, and that such resources are causally necessary. In Experiment 1, participants trained for five days to navigate through a purely conceptual pitch-duration auditory space, then underwent fMRI on Day 6. We observed a six-fold modulation of entorhinal BOLD signals aligned to each participant’s trajectory angles, similar to grid-cell firing in physical space. Stronger grid-like coding predicted larger training-related gains. In Experiment 2, a new cohort performed the same task under either a spatial or non-spatial interference load. Only the spatial condition selectively disrupted performance on trials requiring mental “movement,” indicating a causal reliance on spatial resources. These findings provide evidence that auditory conceptual transformations recruit—and depend on—spatial grid-like computations in the entorhinal-hippocampal system, pointing to a domain-general role for spatial coding in organizing new knowledge along continuous dimensions.”

Kyle Jasmin, Max Bullock, Frederic Dick, Roger Atkins, Roberto Bottini, Federica Sigismondi, Adam Tierney. Spatial coding supports auditory conceptual navigation. bioRxiv 2025.02.04.636440; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.04.636440