Gateway identity and spatial remapping in a combined grid and place cell attractor

Abstract

The spatial specificities of hippocampal place cells, i.e., their firing fields, are subject to change if the rat enters a new compartment in the experimental maze. This effect is known as remapping. It cannot be explained from path integration (grid cell activity) and local sensory cues alone but requires additional knowledge of the different compartments in the form of context recognition at the gateways between them. Here we present a model for the hippocampal–entorhinal interplay in which the activity of place and grid cells follows a joint attractor dynamic. Place cells depend on the current grid cell activity but can also reset the grid cell activity in the remapping process. Remapping is triggered by the passage through a gateway. When this happens, a previously stored pattern of place cell activity associated with the gateway is reactivated from a “gateway database”. The joint attractor will then reinstate the grid cell pattern that was active when the gateway had first been learned and path integration can proceed from there. The model is tested with various mazes used in the experimental literature and reproduces the published results, and we make predictions for remapping in a new maze type. We propose the involvement of memory in the form of “gate cells” that drive the place cells and with them the joint hippocampal–entorhinal loop into the corresponding attractor whenever a compartment is entered.