Center for Systems Neuroscience and Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2024 Sep 13;15(1):8025. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52315-4.
Complex sensory information arrives in the brain from an animal's first-person ('egocentric') perspective. However, animals can efficiently navigate as if referencing map-like ('allocentric') representations. The postrhinal (POR) and retrosplenial (RSC) cortices are thought to mediate between sensory input and internal maps, combining egocentric representations of physical cues with allocentric head direction (HD) information. Here we show that neurons in the POR and RSC of female Long-Evans rats are tuned to distinct but complementary aspects of local space. Egocentric bearing (EB) cells recorded in square and L-shaped environments reveal that RSC cells encode local geometric features, while POR cells encode a more global account of boundary geometry. Additionally, POR HD cells can incorporate egocentric information to fire in two opposite directions with two oppositely placed identical visual landmarks, while only a subset of RSC HD cells possess this property. Entorhinal grid and HD cells exhibit consistently allocentric spatial firing properties. These results reveal significant regional differences in the neural encoding of spatial reference frames.
复杂的感觉信息从动物的第一人称（“自我中心”）视角传入大脑。然而，动物可以高效地进行导航，就好像在参考地图式（“以自身为中心”）的表示一样。后穹窿（POR）和后隔核（RSC）皮质被认为在感觉输入和内部地图之间进行调解，将物理线索的自我中心表示与以自身为中心的头部方向（HD）信息结合起来。在这里，我们表明，雌性长耳大仓鼠 POR 和 RSC 中的神经元对局部空间的不同但互补的方面进行了调整。在方形和 L 形环境中记录的自我中心方位（EB）细胞表明，RSC 细胞编码局部几何特征，而 POR 细胞则编码边界几何形状的更全局描述。此外，POR HD 细胞可以将自我中心信息整合到两个相反的方向，而这两个方向有两个位置相同的相同视觉地标，而只有一部分 RSC HD 细胞具有此属性。内嗅网格和 HD 细胞表现出一致的以自身为中心的空间发射特性。这些结果揭示了空间参考系的神经编码存在显著的区域差异。
