title: A proposed architecture for the neural representation of spatial context.
abstract: The role of context in guiding animal behavior has attracted increasing attention in recent years, but little is known about what constitutes a context, nor how and where in the brain it is represented. Contextual stimuli can take many forms, but of particular importance are those that collectively define a particular place or situation. The representation of place has been linked to the hippocampus, because its principal neurons ('place cells') are spatially responsive; behavioral experiments also implicate this structure in the processing of contextual stimuli. Together, these findings suggest a hippocampal role in representing 'spatial context'. The present article outlines a proposed architecture for the encoding of spatial context in which spatial inputs to place cells are modulated (or 'gated') by non-spatial stimuli. We discuss recent experimental evidence that spatial context is population-coded, a property which could allow both discrimination between overlapping contexts and generalization across them, and thus provide a foundation for animals' capacity for flexible context-linked place learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP, UK. k.jeffery@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Kathryn J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Jeffery
authors.forename: Michael I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hayman
authors.forename: Subhojit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004777:Environment; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology