ePoster

Grid cells rapidly integrate novel landmarks

Ben Sorscher,Surya Ganguli,Lisa Giocomo,John Wen
COSYNE 2022(2022)
Lisbon, Portugal
Presented: Mar 17, 2022

Conference

COSYNE 2022

Lisbon, Portugal

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Ben Sorscher,Surya Ganguli,Lisa Giocomo,John Wen

Abstract

Successful navigation requires the integration of egocentric (body-centered) and allocentric (world-centered) strategies. Previous studies have shown how these two systems could be integrated by coordinating different functional cell types in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC): grid cells, which are thought to serve as path integrators encoding egocentric information, and landmark cells, which encode allocentric information [1]. Theoretical work has shown how landmark cells could learn to serve as an error correction mechanism to grid cells via Hebbian plasticity, and experiments have found that grid cells deform to match environments over hours or days. But both of these mechanisms require numerous exposures to the environment, and long timescales of learning. In ethological settings, animals must solve navigational tasks from just a single exposure and on rapid timescales. Here we use Neuropixels recordings to investigate how the neural circuit learns to rapidly integrate visual cues to the grid cell path integrator. Surprisingly, we find that introducing novel landmarks not only stabilizes grid cell spatial firing, but also induces rapid (one-shot) remapping. Upon further analysis, we find that landmark cells also quickly remap to novel landmarks and that they do so in concert with the grid cells. These findings hint at an alternative, rapid mechanism for integrating egocentric and allocentric information.

Unique ID: cosyne-22/grid-cells-rapidly-integrate-novel-landmarks-3b692361