Hippocampal representation of touch-guided behavior in rats: persistent and independent traces of stimulus and reward location.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the mechanisms by which sensory experiences are stored remains a compelling challenge for neuroscience. Previous work has described how the activity of neurons in the sensory cortex allows rats to discriminate the physical features of an object contacted with their whiskers. But to date there is no evidence about how neurons represent the behavioural significance of tactile stimuli, or how they are encoded in memory. To investigate these issues, we recorded single-unit firing and local field potentials from the CA1 region of hippocampus while rats performed a task in which tactile stimuli specified reward location. On each trial the rat touched a textured plate with its whiskers, and then turned towards the Left or Right water spout. Two textures were associated with each rew

SUBMITTER: Itskov PM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3030589 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature