Distinct neural mechanisms for heading retrieval and context recognition in the hippocampus during spatial reorientation.

ABSTRACT: Reorientation, the process of regaining one's bearings after becoming lost, requires identification of a spatial context (context recognition) and recovery of facing direction within that context (heading retrieval). We previously showed that these processes rely on the use of features and geometry, respectively. Here, we examine reorientation behavior in a task that creates contextual ambiguity over a long timescale to demonstrate that male mice learn to combine both featural and geometric cues to recover heading. At the neural level, most CA1 neurons persistently align to geometry, and this alignment predicts heading behavior. However, a small subset of cells remaps coherently in a context-sensitive manner, which serves to predict context. Efficient heading retrieval and context recognit

SUBMITTER: Gagliardi CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11252339 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature