Topic: spatially tuned cells

The hippocampus maintains an online representation of an animal’s situation in the environment which supports navigation, and generates offline simulations of plausible trajectories in that environment which are used for recall, imagination, planning, and the consolidation of memories. A leading theory is that these capacities rely on an attractive neuronal manifold, or cognitive map, in CA3, with topological correspondence to space. Supporting this idea, continuous attractor neural networks (CANNs) show place cell-like tuning for spatial locations, and can be used to simulate plausible trajec

The study of rodent navigation has for decades focused on the hippocampal and parahippocampal regions, although recently part of this focus has shifted towards whether positional information can be identified in lower association cortices or even primary sensory areas. Spatial representation in these regions is often investigated using one-dimensional paradigms in combination with virtual reality. In the present work, we seek to understand how position is encoded in a more naturalistic, two-dimensional environment. Starting at the sensory level and moving up to higher association areas we aim