Urdapilleta Eugenio, Troiani Francesca, Stella Federico, Treves Alessandro
Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy
J R Soc Interface. 2015 Jun 6;12(107). doi: 10.1098/rsif.2014.1214.
The grid cells discovered in the rodent medial entorhinal cortex have been proposed to provide a metric for Euclidean space, possibly even hardwired in the embryo. Yet, one class of models describing the formation of grid unit selectivity is entirely based on developmental self-organization, and as such it predicts that the metric it expresses should reflect the environment to which the animal has adapted. We show that, according to self-organizing models, if raised in a non-Euclidean hyperbolic cage rats should be able to form hyperbolic grids. For a given range of grid spacing relative to the radius of negative curvature of the hyperbolic surface, such grids are predicted to appear as multi-peaked firing maps, in which each peak has seven neighbours instead of the Euclidean six, a prediction that can be tested in experiments. We thus demonstrate that a useful universal neuronal metric, in the sense of a multi-scale ruler and compass that remain unaltered when changing environments, can be extended to other than the standard Euclidean plane.
在啮齿动物内侧内嗅皮层中发现的网格细胞被认为可为欧几里得空间提供一种度量，甚至可能在胚胎中就已固有。然而，一类描述网格单元选择性形成的模型完全基于发育自组织，因此它预测其所表达的度量应反映动物所适应的环境。我们表明，根据自组织模型，如果在非欧几里得双曲笼中饲养，大鼠应该能够形成双曲网格。对于相对于双曲表面负曲率半径的给定网格间距范围，预计此类网格会呈现为多峰放电图，其中每个峰有七个邻居而非欧几里得空间中的六个，这一预测可在实验中进行检验。因此，我们证明，从在改变环境时保持不变的多尺度直尺和圆规的意义上来说，一种有用的通用神经元度量可以扩展到标准欧几里得平面之外。
