Dynamics of decision-related activity in prospective hippocampal place cells

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Dynamics of decision-related activity in prospective hippocampal place cells Sidney I. Wiener1* 1 CNRS - College de France, Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action, France The hippocampus is involved in spatial navigation and contextual memory. Hippocampal principal cells fire when a rat is in a specific place in its environment and this “place cell” activity can be prospectively modulated by the rat’s imminent trajectory. To examine whether there is a link between prospective coding and navigational decision processing, we recorded place cells in rats performing a task involving a sudden decisional switch and assessed the latency of the prospective activity onset. Rats learned to alternate (ALT) in a continuous T-maze task. Every 5 to 7 trials, a visual cue (VC) was presented as the rat crossed a photodetector at the middle of the central arm. This instructed the rat to repeat a visit to the previous arm rather than to continue alternating. This permitted measurement of the delay required for place cell responses to started to change in accordance with the changed intention of the animal. We recorded 866 cells in 4 rats in 26 sessions and measured prospective activity onset in the VC and ALT trials employing a bootstrap method. In all prospective 19 neurons activity never appeared earlier in cued trials than in alternation trials. A linear regression (t-test for slope p=0.0128) of the onset times of activity in ALT trials plotted as a function of the time difference between the activity onsets of VC and ALT trials yielded a value of T~420 ms. This relatively long delay for prospective activity to arise (compared to on the order of 100-150 ms in other brain areas) indicates that the navigational behavioral choice signal is likely elaborated elsewhere before reaching the hippocampus, perhaps in pathways involving cortico-striatal loops and are then transmitted to the hippocampus for prospective activity. The hippocampus would then engage this for contextual processing of memories in time and space. Keywords: Decision Making, Anticipation, Genetic, planning, Learning, Memory Conference: 4th Conference of the Mediterrarnean Neuroscience Society, Istanbul, Turkey, 30 Sep - 3 Oct, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Abstracts Citation: Wiener SI (2013). Dynamics of decision-related activity in prospective hippocampal place cells. Conference Abstract: 4th Conference of the Mediterrarnean Neuroscience Society. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.210.00071 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Mar 2013; Published Online: 11 Apr 2013. * Correspondence: Dr. Sidney I Wiener, CNRS - College de France, Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action, Paris, 75005, France, sidney.wiener@college-de-france.fr Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sidney I Wiener Google Sidney I Wiener Google Scholar Sidney I Wiener PubMed Sidney I Wiener Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.