Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Cell. 2020 Feb 6;180(3):552-567.e25. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.014. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
Cognitive faculties such as imagination, planning, and decision-making entail the ability to represent hypothetical experience. Crucially, animal behavior in natural settings implies that the brain can represent hypothetical future experience not only quickly but also constantly over time, as external events continually unfold. To determine how this is possible, we recorded neural activity in the hippocampus of rats navigating a maze with multiple spatial paths. We found neural activity encoding two possible future scenarios (two upcoming maze paths) in constant alternation at 8 Hz: one scenario per ∼125-ms cycle. Further, we found that the underlying dynamics of cycling (both inter- and intra-cycle dynamics) generalized across qualitatively different representational correlates (location and direction). Notably, cycling occurred across moving behaviors, including during running. These findings identify a general dynamic process capable of quickly and continually representing hypothetical experience, including that of multiple possible futures.
认知能力,如想象、规划和决策,需要能够表示假设的经验。至关重要的是,动物在自然环境中的行为表明,大脑不仅可以快速表示假设的未来经验,而且可以随着时间的推移不断表示,因为外部事件不断展开。为了确定这是如何实现的,我们记录了在迷宫中导航的大鼠的海马体中的神经活动,该迷宫有多个空间路径。我们发现,神经活动以 8 Hz 的恒定交替编码两个可能的未来场景(两条即将到来的迷宫路径):每个 ∼125-ms 周期一个场景。此外,我们发现,循环的基础动力学(包括内循环和外循环动力学)在不同的表示相关物(位置和方向)之间具有通用性。值得注意的是,循环发生在移动行为中,包括跑步期间。这些发现确定了一种通用的动态过程,该过程能够快速且持续地表示假设的经验,包括对多个可能的未来的表示。