Nonlocal Spatiotemporal Representation in the Hippocampus of Freely Flying Bats

Navigation occurs through a continuum of space and time. The hippocampus is known to encode the immediate position of moving animals. However, active navigation, especially at high speeds, may require representing navigational information beyond the present moment. Using wireless electrophysiological recordings in freely flying bats we demonstrate that neural activity in area CA1 predominantly encodes nonlocal spatial information up to meters away from the bat’s present position. This spatiotemporal representation extends both forward and backwards in time with an emphasis on future locations and is found during both random exploration and goal directed navigation. The representation of position thus extends along a continuum, each moment containing information about past, present and future, and may provide a key mechanism for navigating along self-selected and remembered paths.