Contributed Talk Sessions | Poster Sessions | All Posters | Search Papers

Poster Session C: Friday, August 15, 2:00 – 5:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Spatial Navigation Engages a Distributed Neural Representation

Enny H. van Beest¹, Bex Terry, Kenneth D. Harris², Matteo Carandini¹; ¹University College London, University of London, ²University College London

Presenter: Enny H. van Beest

Navigation is a complex goal-directed behavior that relies heavily on sensory processing. A key center is the hippocampal formation, where well-known ‘place cells’ and ‘grid-cells’ encode the animal’s position. Correlations with spatial position have also been found in other brain regions, including retrosplenial, visual, and even olfactory cortex. However, spatial processes are often not distinguishable from sensory, motor, and reward processes. To distinguish the contribution of different processes to the spiking activity of individual neurons distributed across the brain, we use an experimentally controllable virtual reality corridor, Neuropixels recordings, and reduced-rank ridge regression. We find that indeed, spatial, but also sensory, motor, and reward processes, are distributed widely across the brain.

Topic Area: Memory, Spatial Cognition & Skill Learning

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF