A cognitive map is a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment. The concept was introduced by Edward Tolman in 1948. He tried to explain the behavior of rats that appeared to learn the spatial layout of a maze, and subsequently the concept was applied to other animals, including humans. The term was later generalized by some researchers, especially in the field of operations research, to refer to a kind of semantic network representing an individual's personal knowledge or schemas. Overview Cognitive maps have been studied in various fields, such as psychology, education, archaeology, planning, geography, cartography, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, management and history. Because of the broad use and study of cognitive maps, it has become a colloquialism for just about any mental representation or model. As a consequence, these mental models are often referred to, variously, as cognitive maps, mental maps, scripts, schemata, and frame of reference. Cognitive maps are a function of the working brain that humans and animals use to move in a new environment. They help us recognizing places, computing directions, distances and critical-thinking on shortcuts and supporting us in wayfinding in an environment. Cognitive maps serve the construction and accumulation of spatial knowledge, allowing the "mind's eye" to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load, enhance recall and learning of information. This type of spatial thinking can also be used as a metaphor for non-spatial tasks, where people performing non-spatial tasks involving memory and imaging use spatial knowledge to aid in processing the task. They include information about the spatial relations that objects have among each other in an environment and they help us in orienting and moving in a setting and in space. They are internal representation, they are not a fixed image, instead they are a schema, dynamic and flexible, with a degree of personal level. A spatial map needs to be acquired according to a frame of reference. Because of it is independent from the observer's point of view, it is based on an allocentric reference system, with an object-to-object relation. It codes configurational information, using a world-centred coding system. The neural correlates of a cognitive map have been speculated to be the place cell system in the hippocampus and the recently discovered grid cells