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Authors & Affiliations
Martin Pofahl, Nienke Laura de Jong, Horst Andreas Obenhaus, Hanna Eneqvist, Weijian Zong, May Britt Moser, Edvard Ingjald Moser
Abstract
The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) forms a map of local space as well as local landmarks. This is achieved through canonical feature cells like grid, object vector, head direction and border cells that are located in the superficial layers of MEC but their exact anatomical organization remains to be determined. Previous work has shown that the grid cell network consists of discrete modules of increasing scale along the dorsal-ventral axis of MEC. In addition, recent imaging studies have hinted at a clustering of grid cells towards the medial part of MEC. However, due to technical limitations former studies were restricted to limited subdivisions of the MEC in individual animals. Here, we combine miniaturized 2 photon microscopy (MINI2P) in freely moving mice with stitching of multiple field-of-views to image activity in layer II of nearly the entire medio-lateral axis of MEC as well as parasubiculum (PaS). The preparation allowed us to map feature cells over several hundreds of micrometers in both directions mediolaterally from the PaS-MEC border as well as dorsal-ventrally within individual animals. Cells were also imaged across multiple planes through the 200 um thick cell layer.Our data show that modules of grid cells are anatomically organized in discrete clusters at the very medial part of MEC close to the Pas border with an anticorrelation to other functional cell types.These findings can have implications not only for where the grid signal is generated but also on our understanding of the functional interplay within the grid cell network.