ePoster

Place and reward coding of a remote auditory signal in the hippocampus

Shiladitya Laskar, Shai Abramson, Ohad Rechnitz, Genela Morris, Dori Derdikman
COSYNE 2025(2025)
Montreal, Canada

Conference

COSYNE 2025

Montreal, Canada

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Shiladitya Laskar, Shai Abramson, Ohad Rechnitz, Genela Morris, Dori Derdikman

Abstract

Hippocampus in mammals is hypothesized to support formation of episodic memory. Bedrock of this is based on the evidence of functional cell types related to immediate space, such as place cells. We aimed to test whether hippocampus, known for supporting spatial maps in physical environments, can localize the source of remote auditory signal and rewards associated with its spatial position. Given previous evidence for auditory sensitivity in the hippocampus [1-2], we recorded extracellular electrophysiological activity from auditory cortex and intermediate-ventral hippocampus simultaneously, using chronically implanted Neuropixels probes in a sound-location-reward association task. Previous studies found spatially selective cells, such as place cells, when the animal was actively moving in an environment and here we report hippocampal cells selective to the position of a moving auditory source when the animal was head fixed. We report two functional classes of cells comprising ~ 7\% of recorded units: cells that are active at a unique position of the auditory sound source, and cells that are related either to rewards or to reward location. Our study demonstrates how an auditory modality can contribute to information about position of objects emitting sound in the environment. This is crucial for understanding the general role of hippocampus in formation of maps and understanding its role in an auditory context.

Unique ID: cosyne-25/place-reward-coding-remote-auditory-a8722a96