Navigating from hippocampus to parietal cortex.
The navigational system of the mammalian cortex comprises a number of interacting brain regions. Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex and place cells in the hippocampus are thought to participate in the formation of a dynamic representation of the animal's current location, and these cells are presumably critical for storing the representation in memory. To traverse the environment, animals must be able to translate coordinate information from spatial maps in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus into body-centered representations that can be used to direct locomotion. How this is done remains an enigma. We propose that the posterior parietal cortex is critical for this transformation.
Whitlock
Jonathan R
JR
Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7489 Trondheim, Norway.
Sutherland
Robert J
RJ
Witter
Menno P
MP
Moser
May-Britt
MB
Moser
Edvard I
EI
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D018728:Entorhinal Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*