About this Neuroscience article

Hippocampal place cells encode intended destination, and not a discriminative stimulus, in a conditional T‐maze task by James A. Ainge; Minija Tamosiunaite; Florentin Wörgötter; Paul A. Dudchenko is a Neuroscience article available to read on EtoBox.

## Abstract The firing of hippocampal place cells encodes instantaneous location but can also reflect where the animal is heading (prospective firing), or where it has just come from (retrospective firing). The current experiment sought to explicitly control the prospective firing of place cells with a visual discriminada in a T‐maze. Rats were trained to associate a specific visual stimulus (e.g., a flashing light) with the occurrence of reward in a specific location (e.g., the left arm of the T). A different visual stimulus (e.g., a constant light) signaled the availability of reward in the opposite arm of the T. After this discrimination had been acquired, rats were implanted with electrodes in the CA1 layer of the hippocampus. Place cells were then identified and recorded as the animals performed the discrimination task, and the presentation of the visual stimulus was manipulated. A subset of CA1 place cells fired at different rates on the central stem of the T depending on the animal's intended destination, but this conditional or prospective firing was independent of the visual discriminative stimulus. The firing rate of some place cells was, however, modulated by changes in

Author

James A. Ainge; Minija Tamosiunaite; Florentin Wörgötter; Paul A. Dudchenko

Publisher

John Wiley and Sons; Wiley (John Wiley & Sons); John Wiley & Sons Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 1050-9631)

Published

2011

Language

EN

Field

Neuroscience (Life Sciences)