title: 3-D Maps and Compasses in the Brain.
abstract: The world has a complex, three-dimensional (3-D) spatial structure, but until recently the neural representation of space was studied primarily in planar horizontal environments. Here we review the emerging literature on allocentric spatial representations in 3-D and discuss the relations between 3-D spatial perception and the underlying neural codes. We suggest that the statistics of movements through space determine the topology and the dimensionality of the neural representation, across species and different behavioral modes. We argue that hippocampal place-cell maps are metric in all three dimensions, and might be composed of 2-D and 3-D fragments that are stitched together into a global 3-D metric representation via the 3-D head-direction cells. Finally, we propose that the hippocampal formation might implement a neural analogue of a Kalman filter, a standard engineering algorithm used for 3-D navigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel; email: nachum.ulanovsky@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Arseny
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Finkelstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel; email: nachum.ulanovsky@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Liora
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Las
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel; email: nachum.ulanovsky@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Nachum
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ulanovsky
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: 3-D topology; bats; grid cells; head-direction cells; place cells; primates; rodents; spatial cognition