title: Major dissociation between medial and lateral entorhinal input to dorsal hippocampus.
abstract: Hippocampal place cells are a model system of how the brain constructs cognitive representations and of how these representations support complex behavior, learning, and memory. There is, however, a lack of detailed knowledge about the properties of hippocampal afferents. We recorded multiple single units from the hippocampus and the medial and lateral entorhinal areas of behaving rats. Although many medial entorhinal neurons had highly specific place fields, lateral entorhinal neurons displayed weak spatial specificity. This finding demonstrates a fundamental dissociation between the information conveyed to the hippocampus by its major input streams, with spatial information represented by the medial and nonspatial information represented by the lateral entorhinal cortex.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, W. M. Keck Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Post Office Box 20708, University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX 77225, USA.
authors.forename: Eric L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Hargreaves
authors.forename: Geeta
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Inah
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: James J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Knierim
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003463:Cues; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D018728:Entorhinal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D017966:Pyramidal Cells / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans