Duan Ya-Li, Hu Shu-Yi, Ge Xiao-Fan, Long Jia-Li, Deng Chu, Sun Yu-Ming, Li Cheng-Ji, Zhang Rong, Cai Xing, Lu Li
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Evolution & Animal Models, and Key Laboratory of Animal Models & Human Disease Mechanisms of Yunnan Province, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Kunming College of Life Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Commun Biol. 2025 May 24;8(1):797. doi: 10.1038/s42003-025-08241-2.
Episodic memory is the ability to recall personally experienced events that are situated within specific spatial contexts. Within a navigation environment, salient objects can function as landmarks, and interactions with them can be encoded as distinct episodic events. However, the nuanced integration of "where" and "what" aspects of objects during episodic memory formation remains poorly understood. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of neuronal responses along the rat CA1 proximodistal axis to manipulations of environmental cues and object features. Our results demonstrate that the proximal and distal portions of CA1 preferentially represent landmarks and events, respectively. Following object displacement, we identify an event-like population coding within CA1, distinct from the anticipated pattern of landmark representation. These findings elucidate the specific roles that objects may play in spatial navigation and memory encoding, providing novel insights into the selective processing of object-related information within the entorhinal-hippocampal network under varying conditions.
情景记忆是指回忆个人在特定空间背景下所经历事件的能力。在导航环境中，显著物体可作为地标发挥作用，与它们的互动可被编码为独特的情景事件。然而，在情景记忆形成过程中，物体“何地”与“何物”方面的细微整合仍知之甚少。在本研究中，我们沿着大鼠CA1近端-远端轴对环境线索和物体特征的操纵进行了神经元反应的综合分析。我们的结果表明，CA1的近端和远端部分分别优先代表地标和事件。在物体移位后，我们在CA1内识别出一种类似事件的群体编码，这与预期的地标表征模式不同。这些发现阐明了物体在空间导航和记忆编码中可能发挥的特定作用，为内嗅-海马网络在不同条件下对与物体相关信息的选择性处理提供了新的见解。
