Organization of a Latent Space structure in VAE/GAN trained by navigation data

Abstract: We present a novel artificial cognitive mapping system using generative deep neural networks, called variational autoencoder/generative adversarial network (VAE/GAN), which can map input images to latent vectors and generate temporal sequences internally. The results show that the distance of the predicted image is reflected in the distance of the corresponding latent vector after training. This indicates that the latent space is self-organized to reflect the proximity structure of the dataset and may provide a mechanism through which many aspects of cognition are spatially represented. The present study allows the network to internally generate temporal sequences that are analogous to the hippocampal replay/pre-play ability, where VAE produces only near-accurate replays of past experiences, but by introducing GANs, the generated sequences are coupled with instability and novelty.