Navigation Patterns and Scent Marking: Underappreciated Contributors to Hippocampal and Entorhinal Spatial Representations?

ABSTRACT: According to the currently prevailing theory, hippocampal formation constructs and maintains cognitive spatial maps. Most of the experimental evidence for this theory comes from the studies on navigation in laboratory rats and mice, typically male animals. While these animals exhibit a rich repertoire of behaviors associated with navigation, including locomotion, head movements, whisking, sniffing, raring and scent marking, the contribution of these behavioral patterns to the hippocampal spatially-selective activity has not been sufficiently studied. Instead, many publications have considered animal position in space as the major variable that affects the firing of hippocampal place cells and entorhinal grid cells. Here we argue that future work should focus on a more detailed examination

SUBMITTER: Lebedev MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5996749 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature