Dissociation of the effects of bilateral lesions of the dorsal hippocampus and parietal cortex on path integration in the rat.
Rodents are able to rely on self-motion (idiothetic) cues and navigate toward a reference place by path integration. The authors tested the effects of dorsal hippocampal and parietal lesions in a homing task to dissociate the respective roles of the hippocampus and the parietal cortex in path integration. Hippocampal rats exhibited a strong deficit in learning the basic task. Parietal rats displayed a performance impairment as a function of the complexity of their outward paths when the food was placed at varying locations. These results suggest that the parietal cortex plays a specific role in path integration and in the processing of idiothetic information, whereas the hippocampus is involved in the calibration of space used by the path integration system.
Save
E
E
Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseilles, France. save@lnf.cnrs-mrs.fr
Guazzelli
A
A
Poucet
B
B
D000818:Animals; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis