Place-related neural responses in the monkey hippocampal formation in a virtual space

✍ Scribed by Etsuro Hori; Yoichi Nishio; Kenichi Kazui; Katsumi Umeno; Eiichi Tabuchi; Kazuo Sasaki; Shunro Endo; Taketoshi Ono; Hisao Nishijo

• Book ID: 102851385
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 645 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1050-9631
• DOI: 10.1002/hipo.20108

✦ Synopsis

Place cells in the rodent hippocampal formation (HF) are suggested to be the neural substrate for a spatial cognitive map. This specific spatial property of the place cells are regulated by both allothetic cues (i.e., intramaze local and distal cues) as well as idiothetic sensory inputs; the context signaled by the distal cues allows local and idiothetic cues to be employed for spatial tuning within the maze. To investigate the effects of distal cues on place-related activity of primate HF neurons, 228 neurons were recorded from the monkey HF during virtual navigation in a similar situation to a rodent water maze, in which distal cues were important to locate the animal's position. A subset of 72 neurons displayed place-related activity in one or more virtual spaces. Most place-related responses disappeared or changed their spatial tuning (i.e., remapping) when the arrangements of the distal cues were altered/moved in the virtual spaces. These specific features of the monkey HF might underlie neurophysiological bases of human episodic memory. V V