Hippocampal and Retrosplenial Goal Distance Coding After Long-term Consolidation of a Real-World Environment.

ABSTRACT: Recent research indicates the hippocampus may code the distance to the goal during navigation of newly learned environments. It is unclear however, whether this also pertains to highly familiar environments where extensive systems-level consolidation is thought to have transformed mnemonic representations. Here we recorded fMRI while University College London and Imperial College London students navigated virtual simulations of their own familiar campus (>2 years of exposure) and the other campus learned days before scanning. Posterior hippocampal activity tracked the distance to the goal in the newly learned campus, as well as in familiar environments when the future route contained many turns. By contrast retrosplenial cortex only tracked the distance to the goal in the familiar campus.

SUBMITTER: Patai EZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6519689 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature