Premium
Evidence for a relationship between place‐cell spatial firing and spatial memory performance
Author(s) -
LenckSantini PierrePascal,
Save Etienne,
Poucet Bruno
Publication year - 2001
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.1052
Subject(s) - alternation (linguistics) , place cell , spatial memory , neuroscience , task (project management) , hippocampus , spontaneous alternation , spatial analysis , spatial ability , spatial organization , spatial learning , psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , working memory , biology , cognition , geography , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , remote sensing , management , economics
The rat hippocampus contains place cells whose firing is location‐specific. Although many properties of place cells have been uncovered, little is known about their actual contribution to the animal's spatial performance. In this study, we addressed this issue by recording place cells while rats solved a continuous spatial alternation task in which they had to alternate between the two arms of a Y‐maze to get a food reward in the third (goal) arm. By manipulating the information available to the animals, we induced the cells to establish their fields in locations that were out of register relative to their standard position, thus making them inconsistent with the learned spatial task. When this happened, the rats' performance in the alternation task was markedly decreased. In addition, the nature of the behavioral errors during inconsistent field placements also changed dramatically in a way that was highly indicative of the rats' spatial disorientation. These results suggest that there is a functional relationship between the spatial firing patterns of place cells and the spatial behavior of the rat, thus strengthening the idea that these cells are part of a navigational system. Hippocampus 2001;11:377–390. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.