John Kubie, SUNY Downstate Medical Center

Navigation and Route Planning in the Hippocampal Formation

The notion that the hippocampus is a “cognitive map” suggests two map functions: self localization and efficient navigation. While decades of work show that the collective output of hippocampal place cells signals the rat’s current position, mechanisms for navigation remains obscure.
The talk will describe recent work from other labs supporting a planning or “look-ahead” function in place cells. I will describe several mechanisms by which entorhinal grid cells can produce imagined paths.
The focus will be on a grid-cell-based "linear look ahead" mechanism by which a stationary rat facing a direction can construct a straight path to see if it intersects a place-cell goal.

Organized by

Michael Brecht