Independence of landmark and selfmotion-guided navigation: A different role for grid cells

Poucet, B., Sargolini, F., Song, E. Y., Hangya, B., Fox, S., Muller, R. U. (January 2014) Independence of landmark and selfmotion-guided navigation: A different role for grid cells. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369 (1635). ISSN 09628436 (ISSN)

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24366147
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0370

Abstract

Recent interest in the neural bases of spatial navigation stems from the discovery of neuronal populations with strong, specific spatial signals. The regular firing field arrays of medial entorhinal grid cells suggest that they may provide place cells with distance information extracted from the animal's self-motion, a notion we critically review by citing new contrary evidence. Next, we question the idea that grid cells provide a rigid distance metric.We also discuss evidence that normal navigation is possible using only landmarks, without self-motion signals.We then propose a model that supposes that information flowin the navigational system changes between light and dark conditions.We assume that the truemap-like representation is hippocampal and argue that grid cells have a crucial navigational role only in the dark. In this view, their activity in the light is predominantly shaped by landmarks rather than self-motion information, and so follows place cell activity; in the dark, their activity is determined by selfmotion cues and controls place cell activity. A corollary is that place cell activity in the light depends on non-grid cells in ventral medial entorhinal cortex. We conclude that analysing navigational system changes between landmark and no-landmark conditions will reveal key functional properties. © 2013 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Item Type: Paper
Uncontrolled Keywords: Entorhinal cortex Grid cells Navigation Place cells
Subjects: organism description > animal behavior
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions > cerebral cortex
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > tissues types and functions > neural networks
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > cell types and functions > cell types > neurons > neuronal circuits
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > cell types and functions > cell types > neurons > neuronal circuits
organs, tissues, organelles, cell types and functions > cell types and functions > cell types > neurons > neuronal circuits
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Kepecs lab
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: January 2014
Date Deposited: 22 Jan 2014 22:02
Last Modified: 22 Jan 2014 22:02
PMCID: PMC3866457
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/29339

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