A vector navigation and inference architecture can construct universal cognitive maps for abstract reasoning.

A navigation-based model demonstrates how hippocampal-like systems can construct universal cognitive maps supporting abstract reasoning, including analogy and perspective taking.

• Why it matters: Understanding how the brain generalizes spatial navigation principles to non-spatial tasks addresses a key gap in cognitive neuroscience, revealing domain-general mechanisms of cognition.
• What they did: The authors developed a model based on spatial navigation architectures that iteratively builds cognitive maps through non-local inference, supporting noise tolerance and discontinuous stimulus spaces, with neural implementations proposed.
• The result: This approach shows that the same computational modules used for spatial mapping can underpin diverse abstract reasoning processes, suggesting spatial navigation systems serve as versatile substrates for cognition.