PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Éléonore Duvelle
AU  - Roddy M Grieves
AU  - Anyi Liu
AU  - Selim Jedidi-Ayoub
AU  - Joanna Holeniewska
AU  - Adam Harris
AU  - Nils Nyberg
AU  - Francesco Donnarumma
AU  - Julie M. Lefort
AU  - Kate J. Jeffery
AU  - Christopher Summerfield
AU  - Giovanni Pezzulo
AU  - Hugo J. Spiers
TI  - Hippocampal place cells encode global location but not changes in environmental connectivity in a 4-room navigation task
AID  - 10.1101/2020.10.20.346130
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.10.20.346130
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/21/2020.10.20.346130.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/21/2020.10.20.346130.full
AB  - Flexible navigation relies on a cognitive map of space, thought to be implemented by hippocampal place cells: neurons that exhibit location-specific firing. In connected environments, optimal navigation requires keeping track of one’s location and of the available connections between subspaces. We examined whether the dorsal CA1 place cells of rats encode environmental connectivity in four geometrically-identical boxes arranged in a square. Rats moved between boxes by pushing saloon-type doors that could be locked in one or both directions. While rats demonstrated knowledge of environmental connectivity, their place cells did not respond to connectivity changes, nor did they represent doorways differently from other locations. Importantly, place cells coded the space in a global frame, expressing minimal repetitive fields despite the repetitive geometry (global coding). These results suggest that CA1 place cells provide a spatial map that does not explicitly include connectivity.Competing Interest StatementK.J.J. is a non-shareholding director of Axona Ltd.