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Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension

Entorhinal grid cells integrate sensory and self-motion inputs to provide a spatial metric of a characteristic scale. One function of this metric may be to help localize the firing fields of hippocampal place cells during formation and use of the hippocampal spatial representation (“cognitive map”)....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Casali, Giulio, Bush, Daniel, Jeffery, Kate
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30770450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811867116
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author Casali, Giulio
Bush, Daniel
Jeffery, Kate
author_facet Casali, Giulio
Bush, Daniel
Jeffery, Kate
author_sort Casali, Giulio
collection PubMed
description Entorhinal grid cells integrate sensory and self-motion inputs to provide a spatial metric of a characteristic scale. One function of this metric may be to help localize the firing fields of hippocampal place cells during formation and use of the hippocampal spatial representation (“cognitive map”). Of theoretical importance is the question of how this metric, and the resulting map, is configured in 3D space. We find here that when the body plane is vertical as rats climb a wall, grid cells produce stable, almost-circular grid-cell firing fields. This contrasts with previous findings when the body was aligned horizontally during vertical exploration, suggesting a role for the body plane in orienting the plane of the grid cell map. However, in the present experiment, the fields on the wall were fewer and larger, suggesting an altered or absent odometric (distance-measuring) process. Several physiological indices of running speed in the entorhinal cortex showed reduced gain, which may explain the enlarged grid pattern. Hippocampal place fields were found to be sparser but unchanged in size/shape. Together, these observations suggest that the orientation and scale of the grid cell map, at least on a surface, are determined by an interaction between egocentric information (the body plane) and allocentric information (the gravity axis). This may be mediated by the different sensory or locomotor information available on a vertical surface and means that the resulting map has different properties on a vertical plane than a horizontal plane (i.e., is anisotropic).
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spelling pubmed-64108782019-03-13 Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension Casali, Giulio Bush, Daniel Jeffery, Kate Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Entorhinal grid cells integrate sensory and self-motion inputs to provide a spatial metric of a characteristic scale. One function of this metric may be to help localize the firing fields of hippocampal place cells during formation and use of the hippocampal spatial representation (“cognitive map”). Of theoretical importance is the question of how this metric, and the resulting map, is configured in 3D space. We find here that when the body plane is vertical as rats climb a wall, grid cells produce stable, almost-circular grid-cell firing fields. This contrasts with previous findings when the body was aligned horizontally during vertical exploration, suggesting a role for the body plane in orienting the plane of the grid cell map. However, in the present experiment, the fields on the wall were fewer and larger, suggesting an altered or absent odometric (distance-measuring) process. Several physiological indices of running speed in the entorhinal cortex showed reduced gain, which may explain the enlarged grid pattern. Hippocampal place fields were found to be sparser but unchanged in size/shape. Together, these observations suggest that the orientation and scale of the grid cell map, at least on a surface, are determined by an interaction between egocentric information (the body plane) and allocentric information (the gravity axis). This may be mediated by the different sensory or locomotor information available on a vertical surface and means that the resulting map has different properties on a vertical plane than a horizontal plane (i.e., is anisotropic). National Academy of Sciences 2019-03-05 2019-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6410878/ /pubmed/30770450 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811867116 Text en Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Casali, Giulio
Bush, Daniel
Jeffery, Kate
Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title_full Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title_fullStr Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title_full_unstemmed Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title_short Altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
title_sort altered neural odometry in the vertical dimension
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6410878/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30770450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811867116
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