Environment geometry alters subiculum boundary vector cell receptive fields in adulthood and early development

Laurenz Muessig, Fabio Ribeiro Rodrigues, Tale L. Bjerknes, Benjamin W. Towse, Caswell Barry, Neil Burgess, Edvard I. Moser, May-Britt Moser, Francesca Cacucci and Thomas J. Wills ()
Additional contact information
Laurenz Muessig: University College London
Fabio Ribeiro Rodrigues: University College London
Tale L. Bjerknes: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Benjamin W. Towse: University College London
Caswell Barry: University College London
Neil Burgess: University College London
Edvard I. Moser: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
May-Britt Moser: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Francesca Cacucci: Physiology and Pharmacology; University College London
Thomas J. Wills: University College London

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Abstract Boundaries to movement form a specific class of landmark information used for navigation: Boundary Vector Cells (BVCs) are neurons which encode an animal’s location as a vector displacement from boundaries. Here we characterise the prevalence and spatial tuning of subiculum BVCs in adult and developing male rats, and investigate the relationship between BVC spatial firing and boundary geometry. BVC directional tunings align with environment walls in squares, but are uniformly distributed in circles, demonstrating that environmental geometry alters BVC receptive fields. Inserted barriers uncover both excitatory and inhibitory components to BVC receptive fields, demonstrating that inhibitory inputs contribute to BVC field formation. During post-natal development, subiculum BVCs mature slowly, contrasting with the earlier maturation of boundary-responsive cells in upstream Entorhinal Cortex. However, Subiculum and Entorhinal BVC receptive fields are altered by boundary geometry as early as tested, suggesting this is an inherent feature of the hippocampal representation of space.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45098-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-45098-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45098-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().