Hippocampal place codes are gated by behavioral engagement

As animals explore an environment, the hippocampus is thought to automatically form and maintain a place code by combining sensory and self-motion signals. Instead, we observed an extensive degradation of the place code when mice voluntarily disengaged from a virtual navigation task, remarkably even...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature neuroscience 2022-05, Vol.25 (5), p.561-566
Main Authors: Pettit, Noah L., Yuan, Xintong C., Harvey, Christopher D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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Animal behavior
Animal Genetics and Genomics
Animals
Behavioral Sciences
Biological Techniques
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Brief Communication
Codes
Hippocampus
Mice
Navigation behavior
Neurobiology
Neurons
Neurosciences
Space Perception
Spatial Navigation
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Description
Summary:As animals explore an environment, the hippocampus is thought to automatically form and maintain a place code by combining sensory and self-motion signals. Instead, we observed an extensive degradation of the place code when mice voluntarily disengaged from a virtual navigation task, remarkably even as they continued to traverse the identical environment. Internal states, therefore, can strongly gate spatial maps and reorganize hippocampal activity even without sensory and self-motion changes. The authors found that the expression of spatial maps in the hippocampus is modulated by the internal state of an animal. Thus, the brain’s code for spatial positions within an environment can transform even without changes to the external world.
ISSN:1097-6256
1546-1726
DOI:10.1038/s41593-022-01050-4