Topic: spatial selectivity

Topographical projection patterns from the entorhinal cortex (EC) to the CA1 region of the hippocampus have led to a hypothesis that the proximal pole of CA1 (pCA1) is spatially more selective than the distal pole of CA1 (dCA1). While earlier studies (Henriksen et al., 2010; Oliva et al., 2016) have shown evidence supporting this hypothesis, a recent study (Deshmukh, 2021) showed that this difference does not hold true under all experimental conditions. In a complex environment with distinct local texture cues on a circular track and global visual cues, pCA1 and dCA1 display comparable spatial

When rodents learn to navigate in a new environment, high place field density emerge at reward locations, fields elongate against the trajectory, and individual fields change spatial selectivity or drift while demonstrating stable behavior. Why place fields demonstrate these characteristic phenomena during learning remains elusive. We develop a model that optimizes for a normative goal, which is to maximize cumulative rewards. Place fields are modelled using Gaussian basis functions to represent spatial information of an environment, and directly synapse to an actor-critic for policy learning