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A place with a view: parietal and hippocampal neuronal activities during virtual navigation in the macaque

Marie Vericel, Pierre Baraduc, Jean-RenΓ© Duhamel, Sylvia Wirth

Date / Location: Tuesday, 12 July 2022 / S05-005
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Knowing where one is and how to reach a new goal from there requires complex computational processes, which are not yet fully understood. To examine the role of the ventral and lateral intraparietal areas in spatial navigation, we recorded neuronal activity in rhesus monkeys performing an orientation task based on salient visual cues, in a virtual environment. We hypothesize that parietal cortex should play a role, along with the hippocampus, in the processing of the visual cues of the environment to support self-position. Using unsupervised clustering analysis, we showed that position-related activity grouped parietal neurons into clusters representing specific maze locations more strongly than hippocampal neurons. Next, we showed that saccade-related parietal activity was modulated by the maze segment in which these saccades were made more strongly than in the hippocampus. This suggests that task-relevant variables influence the amplitude of saccade-related responses, consistent with a link between oculomotor control and the salience of visual cues. Finally, we showed that parietal cells divided into cells that respond strongly to direct fixation of landmarks, or when landmarks are at the periphery of the visual field. Those two populations displayed different temporal dynamics, taking part respectively in the acquisition of stimuli, and in their anticipation. Overall, the results underline a strong recruitment of parietal cortex during active navigation, upstream the hippocampus, which allows tracking of the animal’s position into his environment through a task-based processing of the visual cues, hence shedding light on the neural processes linking place and view.

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