Hippocampal place cells have goal-oriented vector fields during navigation

The hippocampal cognitive map supports navigation towards, or away from, salient locations in familiar environments 1 . Although much is known about how the hippocampus encodes location in world-centred coordinates, how it supports flexible navigation is less well understood. We recorded CA1 place c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2022-07, Vol.607 (7920), p.741-746
Main Authors: Ormond, Jake, O’Keefe, John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378/1595/1554
631/378/1595/3922
9/30
Animals
CA1 Region, Hippocampal - cytology
CA1 Region, Hippocampal - physiology
Cognitive ability
Cognitive maps
Convergence
Fields (mathematics)
Goals
Hippocampus
Humanities and Social Sciences
Maze Learning
multidisciplinary
Navigation
Navigation behavior
Place Cells - physiology
Population
Rats
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Spatial Navigation - physiology
Variables
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Summary:The hippocampal cognitive map supports navigation towards, or away from, salient locations in familiar environments 1 . Although much is known about how the hippocampus encodes location in world-centred coordinates, how it supports flexible navigation is less well understood. We recorded CA1 place cells while rats navigated to a goal on the honeycomb maze 2 . The maze tests navigation via direct and indirect paths to the goal and allows the directionality of place cells to be assessed at each choice point. Place fields showed strong directional polarization characterized by vector fields that converged to sinks distributed throughout the environment. The distribution of these ‘convergence sinks’ (ConSinks) was centred near the goal location and the population vector field converged on the goal, providing a strong navigational signal. Changing the goal location led to movement of ConSinks and vector fields towards the new goal. The honeycomb maze allows independent assessment of spatial representation and spatial action in place cell activity and shows how the latter relates to the former. The results suggest that the hippocampus creates a vector-based model to support flexible navigation, allowing animals to select optimal paths to destinations from any location in the environment. A vector-based model for flexible navigation in the hippocampus allows animals to optimally navigate to any location in their environment.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-022-04913-9