ePoster

Local expansion of the grid cell map during a goal-directed navigation task

Fabrizio Capitano, Celia Laurent, Vincent Hok, Etienne Save, Bruno Poucet, Pierre-Yves Jacob, Francesca Sargolini
FENS Forum 2024(2024)
Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Conference

FENS Forum 2024

Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center, Vienna, Austria

Resources

Authors & Affiliations

Fabrizio Capitano, Celia Laurent, Vincent Hok, Etienne Save, Bruno Poucet, Pierre-Yves Jacob, Francesca Sargolini

Abstract

The aim of this project is to characterize how grid cells code spatial information during goal-directed navigation. Previous studies on the effect of goal on grid cells activity merged goal location with reward, making difficult to conclude about the nature of the information (i.e. location or reward) integrated by the grid cells network. We used a continuous-goal directed navigation task which allows separating spatial goal from the reward. We found a local distortion of the grid map around the goal that only emerges when a halt inside the goal zone is required to obtain the reward. This indicates that the grid map distortion does not simply reflect a goal coding but also integrates temporal constraints of the task . This parallels previous results demonstrating that in the same task the hippocampal place cells code for goal location through a local out-of-field activity.We are thus performing concurrent recordings of hippocampal and entorhinal neurons to test the hypothesis that modifications of the grid and the place maps emerge in parallel. Our results strengthen the view that neuronal activity on the entorhinal-hippocampal network does not simply map the environment in a pure spatial representation but instead provides a complex representation of external events within their spatio-temporal context.

Unique ID: fens-24/local-expansion-grid-cell-during-goal-a4ae3c02