title: Firing rate dynamics in the hippocampus induced by trajectory learning.
abstract: The hippocampus is essential for spatial navigation, which may involve sequential learning. However, how the hippocampus encodes new sequences in familiar environments is unknown. To study the impact of novel spatial sequences on the activity of hippocampal neurons, we monitored hippocampal ensembles while rats learned to switch from two familiar trajectories to a new one in a familiar environment. Here, we show that this novel spatial experience induces two types of changes in firing rates, but not locations of hippocampal place cells. First, place-cell firing rates on the two familiar trajectories start to change before the actual behavioral switch to the new trajectory. Second, repeated exposure on the new trajectory is associated with an increased dependence of place-cell firing rates on immediate past locations. The result suggests that sequence encoding in the hippocampus may involve integration of information about the recent past into current state.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. dji@mit.edu
authors.forename: Daoyun
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.forename: Matthew A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Wilson
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000166:cytology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis