Extensive sampling of neural activity during rich cognitive phenomena is critical for robust understanding of brain function. We present the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD), in which high-resolution fMRI responses to tens of thousands of richly annotated natural scenes are measured while participants perform a continuous recognition task. To optimize data quality, we develop and apply novel estimation and denoising techniques. Simple visual inspections of the NSD data reveal clear representational transformations along the ventral visual pathway. Further exemplifying the inferential power of the dataset, we use NSD to build and train deep neural network models that predict brain activity more accurately than state-of-the-art models from computer vision. NSD also includes substantial resting-state and diffusion data, enabling network neuroscience perspectives to constrain and enhance models of perception and memory. Given its unprecedented scale, quality, and breadth, NSD opens new avenues of inquiry in cognitive and computational neuroscience..

Entorhinal grid cells map the local environment, but their involvement beyond spatial navigation remains elusive. We examined human functional MRI responses during a highly controlled visual tracking task and show that entorhinal cortex exhibited a sixfold rotationally symmetric signal encoding gaze direction. Our results provide evidence for a grid-like entorhinal code for visual space and suggest a more general role of the entorhinal grid system in coding information along continuous dimensions.

We explore the environment not only by navigating, but also by viewing our surroundings with our eyes. Here we review growing evidence that the mammalian hippocampal formation, extensively studied in the context of navigation and memory, mediates a representation of visual space that is stably anchored to the external world. This visual representation puts the hippocampal formation in a central position to guide viewing behavior and to modulate visual processing beyond the medial temporal lobe (MTL). We suggest that vision and navigation share several key computational challenges that are solved by overlapping and potentially common neural systems, making vision an optimal domain to explore whether and how the MTL supports cognitive operations beyond navigation.

Environmental boundaries anchor cognitive maps that support memory. However, trapezoidal boundary geometry distorts the regular firing patterns of entorhinal grid cells proposedly providing a metric for cognitive maps. Here, we test the impact of trapezoidal boundary geometry on human spatial memory using immersive virtual reality. Consistent with reduced regularity of grid patterns in rodents and a grid-cell model based on the eigenvectors of the successor representation, human positional memory was degraded in a trapezoid compared to a square environment; an effect particularly pronounced in the trapezoid's narrow part. Congruent with spatial frequency changes of eigenvector grid patterns, distance estimates between remembered positions were persistently biased; revealing distorted memory maps that explained behavior better than the objective maps. Our findings demonstrate that environmental geometry affects human spatial memory similarly to rodent grid cell activity-thus strengthening the putative link between grid cells and behavior along with their cognitive functions beyond navigation.