Publication Date:
2010-01-22
Description:
Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex of freely moving rats provide a strikingly periodic representation of self-location which is indicative of very specific computational mechanisms. However, the existence of grid cells in humans and their distribution throughout the brain are unknown. Here we show that the preferred firing directions of directionally modulated grid cells in rat entorhinal cortex are aligned with the grids, and that the spatial organization of grid-cell firing is more strongly apparent at faster than slower running speeds. Because the grids are also aligned with each other, we predicted a macroscopic signal visible to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans. We then looked for this signal as participants explored a virtual reality environment, mimicking the rats' foraging task: fMRI activation and adaptation showing a speed-modulated six-fold rotational symmetry in running direction. The signal was found in a network of entorhinal/subicular, posterior and medial parietal, lateral temporal and medial prefrontal areas. The effect was strongest in right entorhinal cortex, and the coherence of the directional signal across entorhinal cortex correlated with spatial memory performance. Our study illustrates the potential power of combining single-unit electrophysiology with fMRI in systems neuroscience. Our results provide evidence for grid-cell-like representations in humans, and implicate a specific type of neural representation in a network of regions which supports spatial cognition and also autobiographical memory.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3173857/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3173857/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Doeller, Christian F -- Barry, Caswell -- Burgess, Neil -- G0501672/Medical Research Council/United Kingdom -- G0501672(76328)/Medical Research Council/United Kingdom -- Medical Research Council/United Kingdom -- England -- Nature. 2010 Feb 4;463(7281):657-61. doi: 10.1038/nature08704. Epub 2010 Jan 20.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London WC1N 3AR, UK. c.doeller@ucl.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20090680" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Adaptation, Physiological/physiology
;
Adolescent
;
Adult
;
Animals
;
Entorhinal Cortex/*cytology
;
Humans
;
Logic
;
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
;
Male
;
Memory/*physiology
;
Neurons/*physiology
;
Orientation/*physiology
;
Rats
;
Running
;
Space Perception/*physiology
;
User-Computer Interface
;
Young Adult
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
