Connecting multiple spatial scales to decode the population activity of grid cells.

ABSTRACT: Mammalian grid cells fire when an animal crosses the points of an imaginary hexagonal grid tessellating the environment. We show how animals can navigate by reading out a simple population vector of grid cell activity across multiple spatial scales, even though neural activity is intrinsically stochastic. This theory of dead reckoning explains why grid cells are organized into discrete modules within which all cells have the same lattice scale and orientation. The lattice scale changes from module to module and should form a geometric progression with a scale ratio of around 3/2 to minimize the risk of making large-scale errors in spatial localization. Such errors should also occur if intermediate-scale modules are silenced, whereas knocking out the module at the smallest scale will only a

SUBMITTER: Stemmler M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4730856 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature