Nishijo H, Ono T, Eifuku S, Tamura R
Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Japan.
Neurosci Lett. 1997 Apr 18;226(1):57-60. doi: 10.1016/s0304-3940(97)00255-3.
To solve complex spatial problems like visual scanning and spatial navigation, animals must explore and actively sense an array of environmental stimuli. Recent studies have led to an agreement that the hippocampal formation (HF) is essential to the internal representation of spatial relation in animals. In the present study, neural activity was recorded from the HF of three monkeys, which steered a cab to various locations by pressing the appropriate bars (spatial moving task). Place-related activity of most HF neurons persisted even if the direction the monkey faced was rotated during the task. However, when the experimenter, rather than the monkey, controlled the device, the place-related neural activity of most HF neurons turned out to be obscure. The results suggest that the HF represents space effectively in situations in which the animal acts in space.
为了解决诸如视觉扫描和空间导航等复杂的空间问题，动物必须探索并积极感知一系列环境刺激。最近的研究已达成共识，即海马结构（HF）对于动物空间关系的内部表征至关重要。在本研究中，记录了三只猴子海马结构的神经活动，这些猴子通过按压相应的杆将驾驶室驶向不同位置（空间移动任务）。即使在任务过程中猴子所面对的方向发生了旋转，大多数海马结构神经元的位置相关活动仍持续存在。然而，当由实验者而非猴子控制设备时，大多数海马结构神经元的位置相关神经活动变得模糊不清。结果表明，在动物在空间中行动的情况下，海马结构能有效地表征空间。
