Place cells on a maze encode routes rather than destinations

Citation

Grieves RM, Wood ER & Dudchenko PA (2016) Place cells on a maze encode routes rather than destinations. eLife, 5, Art. No.: e15986. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15986

Abstract
Hippocampal place cells fire at different rates when a rodent runs through a given location on its way to different destinations. However, it is unclear whether such firing represents the animal's intended destination or the execution of a specific trajectory. To distinguish between these possibilities, Lister Hooded rats (n=8) were trained to navigate from a start box to three goal locations via four partially overlapping routes. Two of these led to the same goal location. Of the cells that fired on these two routes, 95.8% showed route-dependent firing (firing on only one route), whereas only two cells (4.2%) showed goal-dependent firing (firing similarly on both routes). In addition, route-dependent place cells over-represented the less discriminable routes, and place cells in general over-represented the start location. These results indicate that place cell firing on overlapping routes reflects the animal's route, not its goals, and that this firing may aid spatial discrimination.

Keywords
hippocampus; place cell; spatial memory; trajectory encoding

Journal
eLife: Volume 5