RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 State transitions in the statistically stable place cell population are determined by visual change
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.06.16.448638
DO 10.1101/2021.06.16.448638
A1 Sander Tanni
A1 William de Cothi
A1 Caswell Barry
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/17/2021.06.16.448638.abstract
AB The hippocampus plays a central role in mammalian navigation and memory, yet an implementational understanding of the rules that govern the formation of individual place fields and the spatial-statistics of the population as a whole are lacking. We analysed large numbers of CA1 place fields recorded while rats foraged in different-sized environments up to 8.75 m2. We found that place cell propensities to form fields were proportional to open-field area, gamma-distributed, and conserved across environments. The properties of place fields varied positionally with a denser distribution of smaller fields near boundaries. Remarkably, the variation in field sizes and densities exactly countered each other, such that the population-level statistics were constant both within and between environments. Using a virtual reality replica of the environment, we showed that this variable rate of transition through the statistically stable place cell population was matched to change in the animals’ visual scenes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.