Department of Bioengineering, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Nature. 2022 Apr;604(7904):98-103. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04560-0. Epub 2022 Mar 30.
Neural activity in the hippocampus is known to reflect how animals move through an environment. Although navigational behaviour may show considerable stability, the tuning stability of individual hippocampal neurons remains unclear. Here we used wireless calcium imaging to longitudinally monitor the activity of dorsal CA1 hippocampal neurons in freely flying bats performing highly reproducible flights in a familiar environment. We find that both the participation and the spatial selectivity of most neurons remain stable over days and weeks. We also find that apparent changes in tuning can be largely attributed to variations in the flight behaviour of the bats. Finally, we show that bats navigating in the same environment under different room lighting conditions (lights on versus lights off) exhibit substantial changes in flight behaviour that can give the illusion of neuronal instability. However, when similar flight paths are compared across conditions, the stability of the hippocampal code persists. Taken together, we show that the underlying hippocampal code is highly stable over days and across contexts if behaviour is taken into account.
海马体中的神经活动被认为反映了动物在环境中的运动方式。尽管导航行为可能表现出相当大的稳定性，但单个海马体神经元的调谐稳定性仍不清楚。在这里，我们使用无线钙成像技术，在熟悉的环境中，对自由飞行的蝙蝠的背侧 CA1 海马体神经元的活动进行纵向监测。我们发现，大多数神经元的参与和空间选择性在几天和几周内保持稳定。我们还发现，调谐的明显变化在很大程度上归因于蝙蝠飞行行为的变化。最后，我们表明，在不同的房间照明条件下（开灯与关灯）在相同环境中导航的蝙蝠表现出显著的飞行行为变化，这可能给人以神经元不稳定的错觉。然而，当在不同条件下比较相似的飞行路径时，海马体编码的稳定性仍然存在。总之，如果考虑到行为，我们表明，在几天和不同环境中，潜在的海马体编码是高度稳定的。
