Mice navigate complex landscapes by learning a sparse vocabulary of paths
- 1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Research Campus
Abstract
Effective navigation is critical for survival, but how animals contend with the scale, complexity, and self-similarity of natural landscapes is unknown. Here, we investigate spontaneous exploratory mouse behavior, both outdoors and in dark self-similar landscapes made from tens to hundreds of tiles of varying heights. Within 2 hours of exploration, mice detected small covert changes to the landscape and jumped across ledges to invisible landing spots, revealing detailed spatial knowledge. In this process, mice converged on a sparse set of memorized paths. These routes depended on prior experience and increased the compressibility of sensory information over time. Our results demonstrate that mice rapidly learn sparse internal representations of their surroundings and suggest that animals use structured behavioral sequences to reduce the complexity of natural navigation.
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BibTeX
@misc{ma2026mice,
title = {{Mice navigate complex landscapes by learning a sparse vocabulary of paths}},
author = {T. Ma and A. E. Comrie and V. Pjanovic and L. Karashchuk and E. J. Dennis and A. M. Hermundstad and J. Voigts},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.10.757726},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.10.757726v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Mice navigate complex landscapes by learning a sparse vocabulary of paths
AU - T. Ma
AU - A. E. Comrie
AU - V. Pjanovic
AU - L. Karashchuk
AU - E. J. Dennis
AU - A. M. Hermundstad
AU - J. Voigts
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.10.757726
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.10.757726v1
AB - Effective navigation is critical for survival, but how animals contend with the scale, complexity, and self-similarity of natural landscapes is unknown. Here, we investigate spontaneous exploratory mouse behavior, both outdoors and in dark self-similar landscapes made from tens to hundreds of tiles of varying heights. Within 2 hours of exploration, mice detected small covert changes to the landscape and jumped across ledges to invisible landing spots, revealing detailed spatial knowledge. In this process, mice converged on a sparse set of memorized paths. These routes depended on prior experience and increased the compressibility of sensory information over time. Our results demonstrate that mice rapidly learn sparse internal representations of their surroundings and suggest that animals use structured behavioral sequences to reduce the complexity of natural navigation.
ER -