Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance

Spiers, Hugo J.; Olafsdottir, H. Freyja; Lever, Colin

doi:10.1002/hipo.22813

Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance

Spiers, Hugo J.; Olafsdottir, H. Freyja; Lever, Colin

Authors

Hugo J. Spiers

H. Freyja Olafsdottir

Professor Colin Lever colin.lever@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Coding the distance to a future goal is an important function of a neural system supporting navigation. While some evidence indicates the hippocampus increases activity with proximity to the goal, others have found activity to decrease with proximity. To explore goal distance coding in the hippocampus we recorded from CA1 hippocampal place cells in rats as they navigated to learned goals in an event arena with a win-stay lose-shift rule. CA1 activity was positively correlated with the distance - decreasing with proximity to the goal. The stronger the correlation between distance to the goal and CA1 activity, the more successful navigation was in a given task session. Acceleration, but not speed, was also correlated with the distance to the goal. However, the relationship between CA1 activity and navigation performance was independent of variation in acceleration and variation in speed. These results help clarify the situations in which CA1 activity encodes navigationally relevant information and the extent to which it relates to behavior.

Citation

Spiers, H. J., Olafsdottir, H. F., & Lever, C. (2018). Hippocampal CA1 activity correlated with the distance to the goal and navigation performance. Hippocampus, 28(9), 644-658. https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.22813

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 9, 2017
Online Publication Date	Dec 14, 2017
Publication Date	Sep 30, 2018
Deposit Date	Jan 24, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Feb 2, 2018
Journal	Hippocampus
Print ISSN	1050-9631
Electronic ISSN	1098-1063
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	28
Issue	9
Pages	644-658
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.22813

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Copyright Statement
© 2017 The Authors. Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.