Time or distance encoding by hippocampal neurons via heterogeneous ramping rates.

ABSTRACT: To navigate their environments effectively, animals frequently track time elapsed or distance traveled while seeking food and avoiding threats. The hippocampus is implicated in this process, but the neural mechanisms remain unclear. Using virtual reality tasks that require mice to integrate time or distance to collect a reward, we identified two previously unknown functional subpopulations of CA1 pyramidal neurons. Both subpopulations encode time or distance via distinct ramping dynamics. The first subpopulation exhibits a rapid, synchronous rise in activity upon movement-initiated integration. Subsequently, individual neurons ramp down at heterogeneous rates, creating progressively diverging firing rates that encode elapsed time or distance. Closed-loop optogenetic inactivation of somatos

SUBMITTER: Heldman R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12712063 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature