Differential influences of environment and self-motion on place and grid cell firing

TLDR

Place and grid cells encode environmental location and possibly conceptual spaces, but theories differ on whether sensory and self‑motion cues are represented separately or jointly. The study aims to dissociate visual environmental from physical motion inputs in mice navigating virtual open arenas to examine place and grid cell responses. Using virtual reality, the authors recorded place and grid cells in mice navigating virtual open arenas to separate visual environmental cues from physical motion. Place cell firing patterns predominantly reflect visual inputs, while grid cell activity reflects a greater influence of physical motion, indicating that place and grid cells differentially encode environmental states and self‑motion transitions.

Abstract

Abstract Place and grid cells in the hippocampal formation provide foundational representations of environmental location, and potentially of locations within conceptual spaces. Some accounts predict that environmental sensory information and self-motion are encoded in complementary representations, while other models suggest that both features combine to produce a single coherent representation. Here, we use virtual reality to dissociate visual environmental from physical motion inputs, while recording place and grid cells in mice navigating virtual open arenas. Place cell firing patterns predominantly reflect visual inputs, while grid cell activity reflects a greater influence of physical motion. Thus, even when recorded simultaneously, place and grid cell firing patterns differentially reflect environmental information (or ‘states’) and physical self-motion (or ‘transitions’), and need not be mutually coherent.