Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for Neural Computation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Neuron. 2022 Jun 1;110(11):1843-1856.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.03.011. Epub 2022 Apr 5.
The representation of an animal's position in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) is distributed across several modules of grid cells, each characterized by a distinct spatial scale. The population activity within each module is tightly coordinated and preserved across environments and behavioral states. Little is known, however, about the coordination of activity patterns across modules. We analyzed the joint activity patterns of hundreds of grid cells simultaneously recorded in animals that were foraging either in the light, when sensory cues could stabilize the representation, or in darkness, when such stabilization was disrupted. We found that the states of different modules are tightly coordinated, even in darkness, when the internal representation of position within the MEC deviates substantially from the true position of the animal. These findings suggest that internal brain mechanisms dynamically coordinate the representation of position in different modules, ensuring that they jointly encode a coherent and smooth trajectory.
在中脑内侧缰核(MEC)中,动物位置的表示分布在几个网格细胞模块中,每个模块的空间尺度都不同。每个模块内的群体活动在环境和行为状态之间都紧密协调和保持。然而,关于模块之间活动模式的协调,我们知之甚少。我们分析了在觅食的动物中同时记录的数百个网格细胞的联合活动模式,这些动物在有光时觅食,此时感官线索可以稳定位置的表示,或者在黑暗中觅食,此时这种稳定被打乱。我们发现,即使在黑暗中,当 MEC 内位置的内部表示与动物的实际位置有很大偏差时,不同模块的状态也紧密协调。这些发现表明,内部大脑机制动态协调不同模块中位置的表示,确保它们共同编码一个连贯和流畅的轨迹。