Spatial problem solving and hippocampal place cell firing in rats: control by an internal sense of direction carried across environments

Abstract

Rats learned to find the baited corner of a box surrounded by a curtain, regardless of whether they had a fixed or random point of entry (POE) through the curtain. On probe trials, rats used an internal direction sense carried from outside the curtain to solve the problem, and only used the visual cue inside the curtain if disoriented and denied access to a view of the room en route. Similar disorientation procedures were required to obtain cue control of hippocampal place fields. The results suggest that: (1) POE effects previously found in the water maze may be task-specific; (2) an undisrupted internal sense of direction carried from one environment to another may provide the preferred solution to spatial problems in the second environment, even when this second environment is a familiar one with stable visual cues; and (3) choice behaviour is sometimes, but not always, representative of the hippocampal representation of space.