title: How vision and movement combine in the hippocampal place code.
abstract: How do external environmental and internal movement-related information combine to tell us where we are? We examined the neural representation of environmental location provided by hippocampal place cells while mice navigated a virtual reality environment in which both types of information could be manipulated. Extracellular recordings were made from region CA1 of head-fixed mice navigating a virtual linear track and running in a similar real environment. Despite the absence of vestibular motion signals, normal place cell firing and theta rhythmicity were found. Visual information alone was sufficient for localized firing in 25% of place cells and to maintain a local field potential theta rhythm (but with significantly reduced power). Additional movement-related information was required for normally localized firing by the remaining 75% of place cells. Trials in which movement and visual information were put into conflict showed that they combined nonlinearly to control firing location, and that the relative influence of movement versus visual information varied widely across place cells. However, within this heterogeneity, the behavior of fully half of the place cells conformed to a model of path integration in which the presence of visual cues at the start of each run together with subsequent movement-related updating of position was sufficient to maintain normal fields.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Guifen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Burgess
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: O'Keefe
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012201:Reward; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013826:Theta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*