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Place cells on a maze encode routes rather than destinations.
- Source :
-
ELife [Elife] 2016 Jun 10; Vol. 5. Date of Electronic Publication: 2016 Jun 10. - Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- Hippocampal place cells fire at different rates when a rodent runs through a given location on its way to different destinations. However, it is unclear whether such firing represents the animal's intended destination or the execution of a specific trajectory. To distinguish between these possibilities, Lister Hooded rats (n = 8) were trained to navigate from a start box to three goal locations via four partially overlapping routes. Two of these led to the same goal location. Of the cells that fired on these two routes, 95.8% showed route-dependent firing (firing on only one route), whereas only two cells (4.2%) showed goal-dependent firing (firing similarly on both routes). In addition, route-dependent place cells over-represented the less discriminable routes, and place cells in general over-represented the start location. These results indicate that place cell firing on overlapping routes reflects the animal's route, not its goals, and that this firing may aid spatial discrimination.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 2050-084X
- Volume :
- 5
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- ELife
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 27282386
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15986