Model-based animal cognition slips through the sequence bottleneck
Jacobs, Ivo LU
; Persson, Tomas
LU
and Gärdenfors, Peter
LU
(2025)
In Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- Abstract
- In a recent article in TiCS, Lind and Jon-And [1] argued that the sequence memory of animals constitutes a cognitive bottleneck, the ‘sequence bottleneck’, and that mental simulations require faithful representation of sequential information. They therefore concluded that animals cannot perform mental simulations, and that behavioral and neurobiological studies suggesting otherwise are best interpreted as results of associative learning. Through examples of predictive maps, cognitive control, and active sleep, we illustrate the overwhelming evidence that mammals and birds make model-based simulations, which suggests the sequence bottleneck to be more limited in scope than proposed by Lind and Jon-And [1].
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/28f4673c-f990-431d-9c4c-baac93902aae
- author
- Jacobs, Ivo
LU
; Persson, Tomas
LU
and Gärdenfors, Peter
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-06-25
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- in press
- subject
- keywords
- predictive processing, mental simulations, cognitive evolution
- in
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- pages
- 2 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- ISSN
- 1364-6613
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.009
- project
- Pyrocognition: the evolution of understanding fire and cooking
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 28f4673c-f990-431d-9c4c-baac93902aae
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-26 10:38:53
- date last changed
- 2025-07-11 14:46:44
@article{28f4673c-f990-431d-9c4c-baac93902aae,
abstract = {{In a recent article in TiCS, Lind and Jon-And [1] argued that the sequence memory of animals constitutes a cognitive bottleneck, the ‘sequence bottleneck’, and that mental simulations require faithful representation of sequential information. They therefore concluded that animals cannot perform mental simulations, and that behavioral and neurobiological studies suggesting otherwise are best interpreted as results of associative learning. Through examples of predictive maps, cognitive control, and active sleep, we illustrate the overwhelming evidence that mammals and birds make model-based simulations, which suggests the sequence bottleneck to be more limited in scope than proposed by Lind and Jon-And [1].}},
author = {{Jacobs, Ivo and Persson, Tomas and Gärdenfors, Peter}},
issn = {{1364-6613}},
keywords = {{predictive processing; mental simulations; cognitive evolution}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{06}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Trends in Cognitive Sciences}},
title = {{Model-based animal cognition slips through the sequence bottleneck}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.009}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.009}},
year = {{2025}},
}