RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Long-Term Effects of Permanent Vestibular Lesions on Hippocampal Spatial Firing
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 6490
OP 6498
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.23-16-06490.2003
VO 23
IS 16
A1 Noah A. Russell
A1 Arata Horii
A1 Paul F. Smith
A1 Cynthia L. Darlington
A1 David K. Bilkey
YR 2003
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/16/6490.abstract
AB The hippocampus is thought to be important for spatial representation processes that depend on the integration of both self-movement and allocentric cues. The vestibular system is a particularly important source of self-movement information that may contribute to this spatial representation. To test the hypothesis that the vestibular system provides self-movement information to the hippocampus, rats were given either a bilateral labyrinthectomy (n = 6) or a sham surgery (n = 6), and at least 60 d after surgery hippocampal CA1 neurons were recorded extracellularly while the animals foraged freely in an open arena. Recorded cells were classified as complex spiking (n = 80) or noncomplex spiking (n = 33) neurons, and their spatial firing fields (place fields) were examined. The most striking effect of the lesion was that it appeared to completely abolish location-related firing. The results of this and previous studies provide converging evidence demonstrating that vestibular information is processed by the hippocampus. The disruption of the vestibular input to the hippocampus may interfere with the reconciliation of internal self-movement signals with the changes to the external sensory inputs that occur as a result of that movement. This would disrupt the ability of the animal to integrate allocentric and egocentric information into a coherent representation of space.