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Development of spatial firing in the hippocampus of young rats
Author(s) -
Martin Patrick D.,
Berthoz Alain
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
hippocampus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.767
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1098-1063
pISSN - 1050-9631
DOI - 10.1002/hipo.10021
Subject(s) - hippocampus , hippocampal formation , neuroscience , thalamus , spatial memory , neurophysiology , neuron , psychology , working memory , cognition
The hippocampal formation participates in learning and memory, particularly that of a spatial nature. In adult rats, individual CA1 pyramidal neurons only fire when the animal visits specific locations in an environment, the “place field” of the neuron. Other structures (postsubiculum, thalamus, cingulum) contain neurons that code for the animal's instantaneous head direction. Previous work has shown that the rat hippocampal formation undergoes anatomical and neurophysiological maturation during the first 2 months of life and that rats <40 days of age are impaired in spatial navigation tasks. Here we show that the locational firing of CA1 pyramidal neurons is both less specific and less stable in animals aged <50 days. However, preliminary results indicate that head directional firing recorded around day 30 is essentially identical to that seen in adult animals. Therefore, the development of reliable, spatially specific place cell activity parallels the developmental time course of spatial navigational ability, but head directional firing appears before full maturation of the hippocampus. Hippocampus 2002;12:465–480. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.