Development of place cells by a simple model in a closed loop context

Tomas Kulvicius,Minija Tamosiunaite,Florentin Wörgötter

doi:10.1186/1471-2202-8-s2-p106

Abstract

Experiments on rats show that visual cues play an important role in the formation of place cells. Nevertheless, rats also rely on other allothetic non-visual stimuli such as auditory, olfactory and somatosensory stimuli. Most researchers have seen navigation in the dark as evidence for the importance of path integration as an additional input to place cells. Many place cell models have been developed by combining visual and self motion (path integration) information. However, Save et al. have shown that olfactory cues rather than self-motion information have been used to stabilize the place fields (PF) of rats in the dark [1]. Based on these findings we model place cells by combining visual and olfactory information in a feed-forward network. We also analyze the influence of the directionality of place cells on a goal navigation task.

Highlights

Experiments on rats show that visual cues play an important role in the formation of place cells
Save et al have shown that olfactory cues rather than self-motion information have been used to stabilize the place fields (PF) of rats in the dark [1]
Sensory inputs as well as place cells are affected whenever the rat navigates in the environment, l f l fi ld bf ibfildd fi d (FAig)uErxeam1 ple of place fields (A) Example of place fields. (B) Average number of steps against number of trials needed to find a goal in 100 experiments

Summary

Introduction

Experiments on rats show that visual cues play an important role in the formation of place cells. Most researchers have seen navigation in the dark as evidence for the importance of path integration as an additional input to place cells. Many place cell models have been developed by combining visual and self motion (path integration) information. Save et al have shown that olfactory cues rather than self-motion information have been used to stabilize the place fields (PF) of rats in the dark [1]. Based on these findings we model place cells by combining visual and olfactory information in a feed-forward network. We analyze the influence of the directionality of place cells on a goal navigation task

Methods

Results

Conclusion