UCL Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, London, UK.
Nat Neurosci. 2021 Sep;24(9):1270-1279. doi: 10.1038/s41593-021-00884-8. Epub 2021 Jul 29.
The behavioral strategies that mammals use to learn multi-step routes are unknown. In this study, we investigated how mice navigate to shelter in response to threats when the direct path is blocked. Initially, they fled toward the shelter and negotiated obstacles using sensory cues. Within 20 min, they spontaneously adopted a subgoal strategy, initiating escapes by running directly to the obstacle's edge. Mice continued to escape in this manner even after the obstacle had been removed, indicating use of spatial memory. However, standard models of spatial learning-habitual movement repetition and internal map building-did not explain how subgoal memories formed. Instead, mice used a hybrid approach: memorizing salient locations encountered during spontaneous 'practice runs' to the shelter. This strategy was also used during a geometrically identical food-seeking task. These results suggest that subgoal memorization is a fundamental strategy by which rodents learn efficient multi-step routes in new environments.
哺乳动物用于学习多步路线的行为策略尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们研究了当直接路径被阻断时，老鼠如何在受到威胁时导航到避难所。最初，它们会冲向避难所，并利用感官线索来绕过障碍物。在 20 分钟内，它们自发地采用了子目标策略，直接跑到障碍物边缘开始逃跑。即使障碍物已经被移除，老鼠仍然以这种方式逃跑，这表明它们使用了空间记忆。然而，空间学习的标准模型——习惯运动重复和内部地图构建——并不能解释子目标记忆是如何形成的。相反，老鼠采用了一种混合策略：记住在自发的“练习跑”中遇到的显著位置，以便前往避难所。这种策略也用于几何形状完全相同的觅食任务中。这些结果表明，子目标记忆是啮齿动物在新环境中学习高效多步路线的一种基本策略。
