The Journal of Neuroscience, October 15, 2002, 22(20):9035-9047
Relationships between Place Cell Firing Fields and Navigational
Decisions by Rats
Pierre-Pascal
Lenck-Santini1,
Robert U.
Muller2, 3,
Etienne
Save1, and
Bruno
Poucet1
1 Laboratory of Neurobiology and Cognition, Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, 13402 Marseille, France,
2 Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, State
University of New York Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York
12246, and 3 Medical Research Council Center for Synaptic
Plasticity, Department of Anatomy, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8
1TD, United Kingdom
This study examined the performance of spatial problems by rats
when purely behavioral manipulations disturb the relationship between
the place cell representation and the cues used to solve the problems.
Place cells were recorded while rats performed a task in which they had
to locate a goal in a gray cylinder. In the "far" task, the
unmarked goal was displaced by a large fixed distance from a white card
on the cylinder wall. In the "near" task, the unmarked goal was
directly in front of the card. Finally, in the "cue" task the goal
was marked by a black disk on the cylinder floor. Relationships between
visible stimuli and place cell activity were manipulated by conducting
either "hidden" (with the rat in its home cage) or "visible"
(with the rat in the recording apparatus) rotations of the wall card
and, when present, independent rotations of the black disk. Hidden card
rotations generally caused equal firing field rotations, whereas
visible card rotations often did not cause fields to move. In the far
task, visible card rotations were associated with a strong decrease of
correct responses in the card-referred goal area. Most rats tended to
search the goal in the field-referred area. In the near task, visible
card rotations were associated with a moderate decrease of performance,
with rats searching the goal at the wall card. Finally, field
placements had no effect on performance in the cue task. Thus, visible
rotations tended to disrupt the relationship between firing fields and
cues in all tasks but impaired performance only in the task that
required map-based navigation. These results provide strong new
evidence in favor of the spatial mapping theory of hippocampal function.
Key words:
hippocampus; unit recordings; place cells; spatial
navigation; rat; spatial memory
Copyright © 2002 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/02/22209035-13$05.00/0
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