Topic: place fields

Behavioral time scale synaptic plasticity underlies CA1 place fields

The hippocampus is a key player in learning and memory. Research into this brain structure has long emphasized its plasticity and flexibility, though recent reports have come to appreciate its remarkably stable firing patterns. How novel information incorporates itself into networks that maintain their ongoing dynamics remains an open question, largely due to a lack of experimental access points into network stability. Development may provide one such access point. To explore this hypothesis, we birthdated CA1 pyramidal neurons using in-utero electroporation and examined their functional featu

A key issue in understanding circuit operations is the extent to which neuronal spiking reflects local computation or responses to upstream inputs. Several studies have lesioned or silenced inputs to area CA1 of the hippocampus - either area CA3 or the entorhinal cortex and examined the effect on CA1 pyramidal cells. However, the types of the reported physiological impairments vary widely, primarily because simultaneous manipulations of these redundant inputs have never been performed. In this study, I combined optogenetic silencing of unilateral and bilateral mEC, of the local CA1 region, and

The hippocampus (HC) plays a pivotal role in spatial navigation and memory in the human brain. Place cells, specialised neurons residing within the hippocampus, exhibit selective firing patterns corresponding to specific spatial locations, collectively contributing to the cognitive mapping of the environment. In healthy state, the place fields in the CA1 region exhibits continuous representational turnover [1]. Spatial navigation is disrupted in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). AD, a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by progressive cognitive decline, is associated with deficits in learning a

Creating place fields in place cells is crucial for forming spatially dependent episodic memories in the brain, with the hippocampus playing a central role. Specifically, we focus on CA1 pyramidal neurons, which receive inputs from the CA3 and entorhinal cortex (EC). No widely accepted network-based theory for place field formation exists, but many models offer mechanisms for place-field firing. One type of hypotheses proposes that it results from summated output of spatially tuned cells, like grid cells or boundary vector cells. Another suggests CA1 place fields are replicate of CA3 place fie

Hippocampal place cell populations putatively encode allocentric spatial position [1-4]. In bats and rodents, place cells exhibit heterogeneously sized and overlapping receptive (or place) fields [5-9]. These heterogeneous place fields instantiate a multiscale spatial tuning landscape in which the larger place fields of some place cells encompass the relatively more numerous narrowly tuned place fields of other cells (Fig 1a). In this work, we investigate the effectiveness of such multiscale codes for encoding allocentric spatial position. We do so by deriving closed-form expressions for how w