Visual cue-related activity of cells in the medial entorhinal cortex during navigation in virtual reality.

Amina A Kinkhabwala,David W Tank,Yi Gu,Dmitriy Aronov

doi:10.7554/elife.43140

Abstract

During spatial navigation, animals use self-motion to estimate positions through path integration. However, estimation errors accumulate over time and it is unclear how they are corrected. Here we report a new cell class ('cue cell') encoding visual cues that could be used to correct errors in path integration in mouse medial entorhinal cortex (MEC). During virtual navigation, individual cue cells exhibited firing fields only near visual cues and their population response formed sequences repeated at each cue. These cells consistently responded to cues across multiple environments. On a track with cues on left and right sides, most cue cells only responded to cues on one side. During navigation in a real arena, they showed spatially stable activity and accounted for 32% of unidentified, spatially stable MEC cells. These cue cell properties demonstrate that the MEC contains a code representing spatial landmarks, which could be important for error correction during path integration.

Highlights

Animals navigate using landmarks, objects or features that provide sensory cues, to estimate spatial location
We found that a small percentage of cue cells were conjunctive with border (11%) or grid (28%) cell types, and some cue cells had a significant head direction score (35%)
We have described a novel class of cells in medial entorhinal cortex (MEC)—termed cue cells—that were defined by a spatial firing pattern consisting of spatial firing fields located near prominent visual landmarks

Summary

Introduction

Objects or features that provide sensory cues, to estimate spatial location. Border cells in the MEC, with firing fields extending across environmental boundaries (Solstad et al, 2008), are good candidates for supplying information for error correction near the perimeter of simple arenas (Pollock et al, 2018). It would be useful to further determine whether these unclassified cells represent spatial cues (other than borders) that could be used in error correction We address this question by recording from populations of cells in the MEC during virtual navigation along landmark-rich linear tracks using electrophysiological and two-photon imaging approaches. During navigation along different virtual tracks, cue cells largely maintained the same cue-aligned firing patterns These cells could provide position information necessary in local MEC circuits for error correction during path integration in sensory rich environments, which are regularly found in nature

Results

E Spatially stable cells 1

Discussion

Materials and methods

Funding Funder