Microelectrical Stimulation of Brain Nuclei-Induced Regional Disruptions on the Construction of Spatial Navigation Memory Pathways in Robotic Pigeons

Spatial navigation memory is the ability of the brain to encode, store and retrieve positional information of the surrounding environment, helping with path planning and navigation by constructing a “cognitive map”. In this paper, microelectrical stimulation was used on the periventricular gray layer (SGP) nucleus related to fear and escape to form regional obstacles and change the original foraging path of pigeons, thereby forming a new spatial navigation memory path. Experiments show that microelectrical stimulation to form regional obstacles can effectively interfere with the memory formation of robot pigeons. In the presence of obstacles, pigeons can accurately complete spatial navigation tasks and reconstruct memory paths. This provides a new theoretical basis and practical guidance for the development of animal robots capable of performing complex spatial tasks and the study of the cognitive abilities of animals in the natural environment.