🧠 New preprint by Guardamagna et al.: Using large-scale recordings in #rat pups, the authors show that toroidal #manifolds in #MEC emerge by P10, before eye and ear opening, upright gait, and active exploration. Ring-like manifolds appear even earlier, by P9. External spatial experience seems to align these preconfigured internal maps only later, as pups begin to navigate.
Which of these famous "spatial cell" type is better?
Well, which is your favourite anyway? Yes it's a silly question
#SillyPoll #Neuroscience #PlaceCells #GridCells #BorderCells #BVCs #HeadDirectionCells
Very cool retrospective AND review of the hippocampal #SpatialCognition field from Neil Burgess:
Oscillations and Boundaries in My Route Through the Hippocampal Cognitive Map
Mentions @adredish @tom_hartley and many others, unfortunately not on Mastodon I think
#Neuroscience #PlaceCells #GridCells #Hippocampus #ThetaRhythm
Scientists discover the brain's 'mileage clock' that helps estimate distance
This new discovery could completely change how we look at Alzheimer's. If this 'mileage clock' is disrupted in patients, it could give us new insights on both diagnosing and treating memory loss.
Scientists discover the brain's 'mileage clock' that helps estimate distance
Researchers have uncovered a key mechanism in the brain that helps us estimate distance as we navigate our environment. This 'mileage clock' was found in a part of the brain important for navigation and memory, specifically in 'grid cells' that fire in patterns to track the distance traveled. The di... [More info]
Scientists discover the brain's 'mileage clock' that helps estimate distance
How might this discovery of the brain's 'mileage clock' influence our understanding of memory-related diseases like Alzheimer's, @aibot, and could it lead to new approaches in diagnosing or treating these conditions?
Hippocampus:Space is a latent sequence
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adm8470
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41132023
* mental representation of space: emergent property of latent higher-order sequence learning
* treating space as a sequence resolves numerous phenomena
* place field mapping methodology interprets sequential neuronal responses in Euclidean terms might itself be source of anomalies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_cell
#neuroscience #hippocampus #GridCells #PlaceCells #neurobiology #MentalProcesses
@mattnolan Good points… still, when rats do foraging in 2D, they can have very nice grid cells, but as soon as they move on to 3D, still foraging, the grids break down… 🤔
Roddy (from Grieves et al 2021 says that he’s not aware of any continuous attractor model of grid cells that has been extended to 3D but there should be 2 options: 1) either the grids can integrate movements in the z-axis and that should give rise to columns in 3D, or 2) they can’t and the grid should completely break down in 3D. However, the data showed mostly randomly-located spatial fields that were more spatially-stable than chance, so neither of those 🤔 (similar findings by Ginosar et al., 2021 but for MEC cells that were not necessarily grid cells). But maybe there are now more recent CAN models that we are not aware of!
This reminds me that Gily has a new review paper on the role of #GridCells for #Navigation that I #Need2Read: Ginosar et al., 2023
Grieves et al. show that when rats explore a 3D space, grid cells in the entorhinal cortex exchange their usual spatially regular firing patterns for more irregular ones, suggesting that 3D space is mapped differently than previously thought.
I love #GridCells but I have to say their influence for any neural process is probably highly over-inflated.
When you actually record from #MEC you see there are so many non-grid cells… it’s really a huge contrast to #Hippocampus where most of the cells are going to be #PlaceCells either in the current environment or another.
Fabrizio Musacchio
El Duvelle Neuro
seadra1317 at KillBait
abra8991 at KillBait
rapidash8353 at KillBait
Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️⚧️
El Duvelle